Even the Stars Burn
by christinaking
Summary: "'The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.'" He quotes Oscar Wilde and pauses before looking at us with his wise eyes. "There's a reason we were brought together like this, even though it wasn't planned. The past, present and future is defined only in the breath we breath; innocuous as a sigh, fleeting as a choice. "
1. Chapter 1

_AN: I think I'm back. I know I need to finish Comes the Piper, but the past few weeks of Criminal Minds have kind of rocked me and I've had a hard time getting back to that one. This has been swirling in my head, though, and I decided to get it down and started. This is X-Files, and there's sci-fi here, and MSR. But it's also my beloved Criminal Minds Demily, written in the only way I could figure to get them back in the same place given their current cannon statuses._

 _My life is still somewhat of a mess, but getting better, and I'm hoping I can both finish Comes the Piper and update this story with relative (weekly, maybe?) frequency._

 _I've missed you and fanfiction!_

 _xxxxxxxx_

* * *

 _My sparse, gray room is a 10 x 10 cell. I've been ripped from everything I know and taken here, into a utilitarian existence that knows no more than the few steps it takes me to shower in a space that hardly allows me to move my arms, a toilet that sits proudly in the middle of my room while cameras in the ceiling capture my every move. My thin bed provides no comfort when I try to sleep, and the nameless faces that visit me daily provide me nothing but agony. There are no windows._

 _Let me be somewhere else. I chanted this daily. I wanted to be back in the comforting arms of my adoptive parents. I wanted my warm room with its big windows and the sunlight they offered. I wanted Little League and family dinners. But they're dead now, the parents I've always called my own. I know they're dead - I watched them burn._

 _Let me be somewhere else, I chanted as they stuck their needles in me._

 _Let me be somewhere else, I recited as they performed test after test on me._

 _Nothing ever changed no matter how hard I pled. Until one day when I was ten years old, and I changed the diction in my mind. "Take me somewhere else," I said out loud._

 _The shining, shimmering light in the corner of my cell altered then. In the place where there was always a dim glow I couldn't figure out, I found an effervescent rainbow. And I walked towards it and through it._

 _I was gripped with nausea and lights that made me dizzy, and I fell hard, flat on my back. Chest heaving, I looked around at my surroundings. I stayed there for several minutes before I felt like I could stand up. And when I did, I was drawn to down the road and to a small office building. Like looking into a dream, my hand reached out and touched the woman I saw there. A woman with red hair who sobbed over the baby in her arms. "Take him," she gasped._

 _I reached my hand out to comfort her, and I felt it land on her shoulder._

 _She startled. "Mulder?" she whispered so softly it was nearly silent. She turned to look, but she didn't seem to see me. I couldn't respond then. I couldn't quite get myself to be in the present in the moment, but I wanted to. I wanted to grab that baby. I want to push him towards her and tell her not to give him up. I was ten years old and I didn't totally understand at the moment why I had to keep that baby with her, nor could I understand why she couldn't see me._

 _I was right there._

 _A faceless man took the baby from her arms._

 _I started to scream because I knew, instinctively, that it was so wrong. But I also sensed how right it was for her. The scream cut off in my throat before anyone could possibly hear it, and a man appeared before me in black pants and a black leather jacket. His hair and eyes matched his attire. "You can't stop this," he said. "It's not time. You're just not strong enough yet."_

 _Confused, I reached my hand towards him. While her shoulder felt solid when I touched it, my hand disappeared through his when I reached out. I looked at him, bewildered._

" _You have more to learn and I'll help you. Go back. It's not time yet. You being here now won't change anything."_

 _He nodded his head towards the shimmering light and I stepped through, heart aching, blocking out the vision of the woman sobbing in that room, collapsing onto the floor of my cell in a heap. People were there waiting for me. "Where did you go?" They screamed and shook me._

" _I don't know," I mumbled. And then I was scared, truly afraid. For if the cameras in my room couldn't see me, it meant I wasn't dreaming; I was really gone._

* * *

His murky gray-brown eyes that settled into a deep blue when he was around four months old never phased me. My mother had relatives with blue eyes. Savannah had relatives with blue eyes. I never gave it more thought than that of adoration, as I kissed the cheeks below those deep blue orbs and reveled in fatherhood.

Savannah went back to work, and I stayed home for the time-being, laughing lightly every morning as I held my son close and marveled at Special Agent Derek Morgan morphing comfortably into stay-at-home-dad.

I fell more in love with my son every day, and I had dinner waiting for Savannah every evening. We laid together on our large bed with our son between us at night, grinning and counting fingers and toes and bestowing upon our son kisses and raspberries on his belly that ignited a smile in him that lit up the room.

"He looks so much like you," people said. Strangers at the grocery store, the park. But even Penelope and the rest of the team said it here and there when they visited.

Perhaps he did or does. We share similar features in facial structure, certainly. But how much does an infant really look like either parent? Not much, apparently.

The discovery was made on a fateful day when I decided to clean up the den during Hank's nap. I went through piles of envelopes long-neglected on our desk. While bills went into one pile to be paid, everything else had piled up while we doted on our son for five months.

I recycled most things, shredded others. And then I came across a 9x11 envelope from Fairfax County. Hank's birth certificate. My name and Savannah's name and our parent's names and a date of birth that filled my heart.

I took a picture of the birth certificate and attached it to a message to my mom, along with a few pictures from the park that morning of her grandson that she doted over.

I took a picture of the birth certificate, sent the message.

I took a picture of the birth certificate and then turned towards our fire-safe file cabinet in the closet to store it away with all our important papers.

I took a picture and then flipped through the second drawer in the cabinet and found Hank's folder that held his immunization records, his hospital wristband, his baby foot prints and all other important paperwork we'd collected since he'd been born.

I glanced through it all, still marveling unbelievably in awe at my life and the life of the little creature who had taken up such a large space in my heart.

I glanced at his discharge papers fleetingly and then moved to put the birth certificate into the folder. Then my heart seized up into something inexplicable raw and hard inside me. Something worse than Savannah being shot. Something worse than those long, dreadful hours when I didn't know whether she or Hank would make it. Something worse than anything I'd endured in my life.

 _Blood Type: AB_

Enough years of investigative work had filled me with the knowledge necessary to know.

To know what two blood types could mix together to create a child with a certain blood type.

To know that my O blood type combined with Savannah's A could never, ever make an AB child.

Numb, I sat in the chair in the den staring at the letters AB until my vision blurred, until I didn't feel like I was breathing, until Hank's cries came over the baby monitor.

Propelled into motion at those cries, I quickly put everything back in the file folder, put it back in the cabinet, and made my way upstairs towards a baby whom I loved who couldn't be my son.

That was a month ago.

The first week, I called in a quiet favor to the crime lab at Headquarters and reached a technician who had always shamelessly flirted with me. I couldn't let the team know back then. I brought my son to a virtual stranger and let Sydney take our blood and run the work as a favor that included a lot of winking and hands that were a little too friendly.

And a few days later, I had everything I needed. Blood tests that confirmed there were no errors in Hank's discharge papers. And DNA results that proved unequivocally that I had never, ever been a father.

Still, I kept my mouth shut for a week. Wavering and weighing options. Wondering if I just could pretend forever. I loved him so. I loved the Savannah I thought I knew, but really didn't.

Then she came home from work late one evening, apologizing that she couldn't leave work on time while she gathered her son in her arms, explaining that she had a patient who was a doctor, admitted after a car accident, and demanding to she her son's chart, who was in the car with her.

"Did you ask to see Hank's chart?" I asked neutrally when she was finished explaining her late arrival, while scooping chicken and rice onto a plate for her.

"Of course," she said after just a flash of hesitation, something that wouldn't have been noticed by most, and almost not by me after five months being out of the profiler game. But I _did_ notice.

I turned towards her, extending the plate. "And mine? I've been to Bethesda Memorial a time or two. Have you looked at my chart?"

She didn't take the plate from me. She didn't answer my question. She clutched Hank closer to her and tears filled her eyes as she realized her game was over. I said the only thing I could think of in that moment, the thing that cut me like a knife every time I'd looked at Hank in the past week.

"You let me name him after my father," I whispered bitterly as I set her plate on the table and turned towards the stairs to pack.

That was the night I left Savannah and the son that was never mine behind, with tears streaming down my face and my car pointed towards Chicago, to drive for nine hours and break my mother's heart.

Savannah and I have communicated by email since then. I know the whole story now, or as much of the story as she's willing to give me. I've read her emails and they've sounded like distant echoes down a long tunnel as her words on the screen spill over me. I don't care who he was. I don't care that she got drunk and was sad because I'd missed another planned date due to a case. I don't care about the friend from med school who was in town, nor the fact that she'd slept with him and regretted it. None of it makes a difference now.

She's received simple replies:

" _Keep the house."_

" _I don't care."_

" _It doesn't matter."_

I don't ask about Hank even though the vision of him in my mind breaks my heart every day.

I don't answer emails or phone calls from the team, who by now has pieced together the story.

I don't even know myself anymore. When I look in the mirror, all I see is the man who sobbed over a baby's crib and whispered broken goodbyes to the little bundle that I loved but wasn't mine to love.

I've holed up with my mother, and we often cry together on the couch, clutching hands, grieving what we thought had been found but was now lost. The first two nights I was home, she crawled into the small twin bed of my childhood with me, wrapping her arms around me and soothing my sobbing as best she could.

She's never asked me to go back. She's never told me I should, or asked me if I could. It's incomprehensible, the loss that was handed to us on a dark platter by the woman we both thought we adored - delivered to us with deceit Savannah thought - _hoped_ \- would last forever.

When the check came in the mail two days ago, I felt ill. I was about to tear it to pieces, when my mother with her red-rimmed eyes put a hand on my wrist to stop me.

"Maybe you have to go back to heal, my son," she whispered while pressing a kiss to my hand. "Think about it."

I stilled my motions and instantly thought about the dilapidated, abandoned building and fields that I'd jogged past nearly every day since I'd been home with my mother.

 _Go back to heal._

The words resonated with me at a time that I needed something, _anything,_ to grasp onto.

So I deposited my share of the equity in the home I lived in with Savannah instead of tearing it to shreds. I made my way to the city offices, and I offered them a deal they couldn't refuse.

I'd refurbish the rec center that haunted my memories.

I'd tear down the walls that were part of my childhood hell.

I'd put it all back together at no cost to them.

They only had to agree to staff it when I was done. An offer they couldn't refuse.

I get the keys to the padlocks on the doors of the rec center twenty-four hours after my offer is made. I bring tools. I place two framed pictures in the windowsill of Carl Buford's office, where I lived out horrors over and over again through the years. One is of the BAU team I consider family from about six years ago - me, Garcia, Rossi, Hotch, Reid, JJ and Emily.

The other is of the team, sans Emily, in a hospital room with Savannah and Hank.

I destroy that picture, the devastating fallacy of it all, with my sledgehammer first, before turning to the walls of the office.

Tearing down the first wall in the recreation center where so many of my nightmares live is less therapeutic than I hope it would be. I thought I might find power in this task, and instead I find tears.

I've found tears in so many things since I left DC, since I walked away from Savannah and our house and the little baby that was never mine to have and love. I don't let my tears stop me, though. I bring the sledgehammer over my back again and again and let my tears mingle with the debris and dust until my vision is blurred.

I destroy the walls filled with my earliest nightmares, in hopes of building something from the rubble that resembles a life again.

* * *

 _I'm startled from the dreams of my past by a hand on my shoulder, shaking me gently. I gasp and my eyes slam open, searching. I'm in the only room I've known in the past decade - a cell in its own way, but a warm one filled with a strange kind of love and comfort - and she is hovering over me. "Time for breakfast," she says in a soft monotone before she brushes her lips briefly against my cheek and the slight stubble there._

 _And so I go. I eat the breakfast she makes from the old stove we've constructed. I know what's coming, and I know I need my strength. The goat milk is rich and the bread she's made is dense. The dandelions balance it in a way I never thought I'd get used to. I eat and drink and we don't talk._

 _And then we set about our morning chores._

 _She's tender with the new baby goat; the dewy weeds glisten in the sun as she feeds the kid out of the palm of her worn hand. If she's nervous about today, she's not showing it. Her hair, mostly gray now, is pulled back into a loose bun, and her profile shows that of a face relaxed and a little smile playing on her lips as the goat eats from hand. Her clothing borders on tattered, and I know I'll have to find her some new things to wear soon, with fall and winter approaching._

 _I stop watching her for a moment and look down at the holes in my own pants. I shake my head, wondering if we'll even still be here come winter._

" _Don't over-think it," she whispers. Talking outdoors is always like this - hushed whispers that barely carry through the air._

 _I look up and smile softly at her._

" _It's time," she told me a few weeks ago. That's it, just two words, and I knew what she meant. I didn't argue, I didn't ask if she was sure, I didn't wonder out loud about why now, ten years later. I knew the answers. We had to wait for the right moment, for the timing to be right. And it was time; I knew that from everything she'd told me in the years we'd been together. So I simply put my hand on her shoulder, nodded, and pressed my lips against the wrinkled skin of her forehead._

" _We'll have to do this right. We'll have to draw them to us," she said back then, as she rested her hand over mine where it lay on her thin shoulder._

 _I just nodded with my lips still pressed to her forehead. I knew the plan. We'd had a decade to ponder it. My single connection to the past seemed to be running in parallel to our present, with their days, weeks, months, years marching to the same beat as our own._

 _At first, she pushed me to find other connections, but it left me exhausted and her vulnerable, and after a few years of trying, she had simply accepted our fate. As she soothed my aching head after my last attempt at creating a portal made seven years ago, she had resigned and said, "So we wait."_

 _And now the waiting is over._

 _I've followed her plan perfectly to this point, creating mysterious disappearances in their world that would trip their trigger and draw them in. And they're here now, or very near here. I saw them setting up camp about a mile down the hill last night._

 _I stand from the log where I've been perched watching her feed the goats - guarding her - and stretch my back. "It's time," it's my turn to say._

 _She nods and grabs the lead on our male goat, handing it to me. She scoops the baby goat up in her arm and grabs the lead on the female goat. We walk carefully around the copse of bramble and weeds and approach the entrance to our home of the past ten years. I take the baby goat from her arms so she can use the handrail to descend the stairs. I follow behind, watching her make the steps slowly, one at a time - left foot down, right foot joining her awkwardly, left foot down, right foot. The bullet wound she suffered a decade ago and then patched up on her own as best she could with few supplies has left her right leg stiff and hurting, especially first thing in the mornings._

 _Our home smells of goats and the bread we had for breakfast. We bring the goats to their pen, separating the male and female, leaving the baby with her mother. I switch on the nearly-silent generator and watch the vitamin D lights softly fill the goat pen. I watch her pat the kid on the head before she turns and gently pats my cheek._

" _Only him," she whispers to me sympathetically, reminding me._

 _I nod, resigned. She knows how much I want to bring her, too, but I'm not sure I can protect both of them, and I won't risk one for the other. I can't._

" _You can do this," she says, full of confidence._

 _I nod again and take her hand in mine, leading her to her room and the cold box that she'll have to stay in while I'm gone. We've lined it with blankets and pillows so she'll be comfortable and warm. She gets in without hesitation, laying back, and smiling softly at me. This part is almost routine for her at this point, but today is different. I'm not going out to find supplies or lay a trap; I'm going to get him._

 _She's nervous and excited and scared and sad all at once - all those emotions swirling in her expressive eyes._

" _Two hours," I say to her. And she nods, blinking rapidly to staunch the tears that I know are burning her eyes._

" _I won't let you down," I whisper as I clasp her fingers._

" _I know. You never have," she responds as she squeezes my hand._

 _I stand and close the heavy lid slowly, so it doesn't bang shut. There's no need for a lock; the protection comes from the thick metal. If anyone manages to get past that and find her, a lock would make no difference._

 _Her finger pokes through the small air hole on the side, its nail crusted with dirt, waving at me._

 _My courage falters slightly as she pulls her finger back in. I'm not scared for me, and I'm not worried about making it back to her. All these decades of living have taught me that short of decapitation, death, much like aging beyond puberty, will elude me. There is no grim reaper in my past or present._

 _But I'm nervous for them. For the woman in the box and the two on the other side, one of which I'll have to leave behind. And for what happens after I bring him in with us._

 _I take a deep breath and turn back the way I came. I pass my room and then the goats, ascend the steep flight of stairs up to the sunlight. I close and lock the heavy metal door before grabbing clumps of weeds and wood to conceal the door's surface. Once I'm satisfied that this looks like nothing more than overgrown wildlife amidst a charred forest, just like everything else around me, I turn._

 _Just down the hill from where I stand, the ripple shimmers slightly in the sunlight and looks almost like sun reflecting off a spider's web. I walk towards it with resolve, take a deep breath, and step through, so familiar now with the the pull and twist in my stomach, the bright flash of light and the wave of vertigo that I hardly notice it anymore._

 _I used to fall when I got to the other side, shaking and sweating, which was dangerous. But now I land on my own two feet, push down the nausea, and find myself in a forest that looks nothing like the one I left behind._

 _Here the trees are standing strong, the leaves green, and the ground covered in healthy pine needles. There are deer here that eat the weeds and prevent things from getting overgrown. There are birds and squirrels and racoons. And not too far away, there are people - families laughing and camping - in the waning days of summer._

 _I let the fresh scent of green trees fill my senses. I remember I brought fresh pine needles back for her once and she buried her nose in them, and then cried for hours. I've been careful with what I bring back for her since then, the only living thing being two goats a few years back._

 _Until a few weeks ago, that is, when I started bringing people back with me, five in all. We kept them blindfolded, though, and she never spoke around them. She did sit and stare at them for the twenty-four hours or so that we held them captive, taking in the features of another, different human face for the first time in so many years._

 _I returned them to this very forest after their stay with us, planting visions in their heads of bright lights and white rooms and not much else._

 _And that's what brought them here. I know their timeline like it's my own. They'd barely gotten their jobs back. They were just reconnecting in a way they hadn't in years. They were sad and still in love and confused and heartbroken and it was all too much to bear unless they were together. They needed their work to bond them, and it was just starting to really work. They were supposed to be hunting down a sighting of bigfoot in the Appalachian mountains on this day in their time, but I changed that with my actions._

 _Mysterious disappearances near a campground outside of Chicago, five in all, where people witnessed a man disappearing into thin air with someone slung over his shoulder, and then those people were found naked a day later on the forest floor with no memory of where they'd been, only memories of bright lights and a white room. Abductions._

 _Fox Mulder and Dana Scully would never be able to stay away. They're just a mile down the hill from me._

 _I'm altering their present, fucking with the future, doing all the things I grew up being told I should never do by a ghost, because it would alter the balance of things in unpredictable ways._

 _Altering the balance of things in unpredictable ways is exactly what we want to do. It's the only hope._

* * *

The surveillance van is stifling in the September air. London is experiencing a heat wave like nothing I've ever felt before, especially in September, and I'm watching my team on cameras as they approach the hostage situation at a bank that's practically in the backyard of my flat.

I know what I'm supposed to do. Emily Prentiss, head of UK Interpol, is supposed to sit back and dictate the situation from afar. But that Emily, who has been my bread and butter of stoicism for the past few years seems very far away. I didn't come here in a suit to watch; I came here in clothing more suitable for tactical situations in order to participate.

It's the Emily I've known for the past six months who received the call early this morning about the situation. That Emily didn't look at the emptiness in the bed beside her and pull a sensible suit of her closet; she pulled out pants and boots and a shirt she could move in and strap a vest over.

Six months ago, the Emily she thought she knew would have donned stockings and high heels and a suit jacket with her ID clipped to her lapel.

Six months ago, she had a boyfriend named Mark, who she thought she was happy with - the man she could be with without giving too terribly much of her heart away.

And then she went back to the states and worked a case with the BAU team - a case that should have culminated in eradicating her nightmares and possibly letting herself get closer to Mark. Maybe she would have let that closeness develop, but something about those few days with the BAU made her reevaluate the facade of a life she was trying to carry out.

Perhaps she would have figured it out. Perhaps she would have come to terms with the inexplicable ache in her heart at the idea of Derek Morgan - the man she thought the least likely to ever settle down before she did - being married and having a baby.

But then her mother died, and she had those arrangement to deal with. When Mark asked her if she wanted him to come with her to DC to attend the funeral and deal with the the estate, she shook her head. No, she didn't want him there. She didn't want to explain grief mixed with relief. She didn't want him to know who she had been before, to know that part of her, didn't even want him to ask questions.

Things dissolved quickly after that, and one day Mark ended things.

Clyde told me that was exactly what I wanted Mark to do, and I know deep down that I did. I'm better off alone.

I don't know the Emily of my past or present anymore. All I know is that I'm in a stuffy van with my finger itching to pull the trigger. I know what we're supposed to be doing here - get the hostages, kill who we have to, but keep the head of the group alive. We think he's responsible for far more than a borough bank robbery.

Still, I don't really listen as I remind myself of the facts. I strap on a vest, check my weapon and am out of the van, ignoring the surveillance team as they try to call me back. They've seen this show a few times in the past several months, and they know I'm operating on my own private house money here; Interpol is none too pleased with my erratic behavior these past few months.

I override the agent in charge. I barrel into the bank as the agent under me mutters a "Bloody hell," in my earpiece.

I am Emily Who Gives No Fucks, someone I've become quite accustomed to and kind of like in my lonely world.

I save the hostages and kill the bad guys, head of the group included, the one whom I ordered not an hour before to keep alive.

I stick around for a bit, but I don't bother with the paperwork or clean up. Feeling quite self-satisfied, I avoid the eyes of everyone, bypass headquarters and make the short walk to my flat, intending to toast my victory with tequila and a good book until I can't see straight.

But my plans are foiled when I enter my flat and find Clyde Easter there waiting for me.

"What in the ever bloody hell, Emily?" he hisses from my couch while his dirty shoes are comfortably resting on my cream colored ottoman.

I open my mouth to argue, to justify, but my eyes land on his and I shut my mouth and look down instead. I'm playing fast and loose and I know it, and I knew before I went into that bank that I was blowing it, yet again, but I did it anyway.

I keep my eyes on my carpet and listen to Clyde breathing angrily. "You are buggering yourself, you know that? You _do_ know that. Is that what you want? You want to get fired?"

Instinct kicks in. And fear. No real friends to speak of, no boyfriend, no parents, no life. My job is the only thing I have.

I shake my head firmly in response, but don't look up to catch his eyes.

"The committee has advised me to let you go," Clyde continues, "but they've left the ultimate decision up to me."

I can't glean anything from his tone. Nothing at all. I chance a glance at his face and see him looking at me, tilting his head slightly to the side, like he's pondering hard what to do with me.

"I think you need to step back," he says, and my heart sinks.

I take a deep breath and am prepared to launch into an argument I'd surely lose with him. But then he flies a question at me from left field.

"Do you know Walter Skinner?" he asks.

I nod once, bewildered and curious. "I've met him a couple times at FBI gatherings. Briefly." I clear my throat and try to will my voice into something that sounds less like scared teenager and more like Emily Prentiss. "I don't think he knows me by name, though."

Clyde nods. "And the X-Files?"

I smirk at the memories of bullpen gossip and jokes when I was a green agent, just out of the academy. "I know about them. They're closed now."

Clyde removes his shoes from my pristine ottoman, leaving faint traces of dirt behind. He puts his elbows on his knees and leans forward, hands clasped. "They _were_ closed. They've been reopened. Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are back. Do you know them?"

I roll my eyes at Clyde, exasperated with the twists and turns of this conversation. "Either fire me or don't," I say firmly.

He shakes his head. "Do you know them?" he repeats.

Clyde is not a person I'm going to get anywhere with by playing exasperated or petulant, no matter how much I may feel that way in my passive-aggressive state of wanting to be cut loose or absolved because of my actions.

I sigh and I nod with one eyebrow raised. "I went to a pathology lecture conducted by Dana Scully for professional development about a year before you recruited me for Interpol. Fox Mulder was there, though I didn't know it until the end, when Agent Scully introduced him to the class.

I can actually still see that time in my mind, how the lanky man with the nose that was too big and the eyes that were too close together and the arms that were just a little too long combined into a stunning figure that only had eyes for the red-headed woman giving the lecture. How he leaned on the classroom wall, a small smile playing on his lips, while she spoke and tried not to look at him.

Clyde nods at me. "I went to Oxford with Fox Mulder. He was a good friend. He _is_ a good friend, though we've hardly spoken in years, until recently. He's missing."

I move to sit on the chair opposite Clyde, wondering where he's going with this.

"Agent Scully believes he's been abducted. She's not someone for whom I would question the validity of her statements. But she's been cut off from FBI resources as this seems to be a recurring theme with the two of them. She's on her own trying to find him…"

Clyde trails off and realization dawns on me. I shake my head and chuckle mirthlessly. "I'm sorry your friend has disappeared, but you can't be serious. Abducted? By little green men?"

Clyde doesn't laugh back. He doesn't even crack a smile. "They're gray, according to Mulder. And I'd never question his honesty either. And yes, that's my deal for you. Take it or leave it."

My years of knowing Clyde have filled in the blanks he's left out, but I incredulously clarify his position. "You want me to go help Dana Scully find Fox Mulder, because the FBI told them to fuck off a few months after bringing them back?" I clear my throat so I don't laugh, because as much as this seems like a joke, I think it's probably not. "You want me to help find your friend Fox Mulder, or I can kiss my job goodbye?" I question neutrally.

The bastard actually nods. He nods and smiles slightly and I want to smack the smile right off his face. I am the head of UK Interpol and he wants to send me into the field with some delusional woman to hunt down fictitious little green - _gray -_ men. And one Fox Mulder who, if memory serves me correctly, seems to disappear with more frequency than socks in the dryer.

Fuck me.

"Is this a joke?" I venture.

He shakes his head.

"And if I refuse?" I ask.

He looks around my flat and then pointedly at the badge on my chest and shrugs. _If I refuse, game over,_ he's telling me.

I feel the sting of tears behind my eyes. My life is fucked up. I'm fucked up. I'm a hot mess and I know I've screwed up, but I don't know if I can handle this absurdity. And I don't like feeling like I'm being treated like a teenager who broke the rules, even though I know that's exactly how I've been behaving the past few months.

I swallow past the lump in my throat. I think about the people I can't face in my current state. "I can't go back to FBI headquarters, Clyde," I whisper finally. "I just can't."

He stands and walks towards me, places a hand on my shoulder. "Who said anything about DC? Fox Mulder went missing outside of Chicago, and that's where Dana Scully is. She's not going to leave until she finds him. Officially, I'm suspending you without pay from Interpol for a month for your indiscretions. Unofficially, I'm flying you to Chicago to help a dear friend of a dear friend of mine."

I look up and he brushes the tears from my cheeks, holding his palm there warmly, like an apology for all the shit I've mostly only brought upon myself, but he's acknowledging his part in the mess that is my life for the first time.

"Do what I'm asking, Emily. Dana Scully called me because she had no one else. She needs someone willing to go a little rogue right now, and I need someone that can come back to me in one piece. If all goes according to plan, you'll be back in your Interpol office by your birthday."

He bends down and presses his lips to my forehead. "Maybe you'll find yourself a bit again, along with the little gray men."

He winks and stands, walking away from me, his voice carrying in the silence of my flat. "You fly out at nine tomorrow morning. Your fake ID is on the kitchen table. No one should know you're there."

The soft click of my front door closing is the exclamation point on his words.


	2. Chapter 2

_He comes around faster than the others, which doesn't surprise me. The first five men I kidnapped took a good hour before they woke up from the ordeal of coming through the portal with me. Fox Mulder starts groaning in just under thirty minutes. I'd quickly regained my strength after bringing Mulder through, probably because touching someone for whom I knew his whole story didn't exhaust me like the memories and feelings that rush at me when I touch a stranger. I was was able to let her out of the iron box before Mulder stirred, but she's still in the bedroom, hiding. I think it's best for me to do the talking first._

" _Mulder," I say, the name feeling thickly emotional rolling off my tongue. After all these years of waiting, after all the planning, I'm having huge second thoughts about this whole plan. But I promised her, and I followed through, and now we have to deal with it._

 _Mulder struggles against his bindings before blinking open his eyes. For the first time, another person is seeing the inside of our home and not some vision I'm implanting in their minds. I'm in the shadows, on the other side of the small kitchen, my face obscured, but his eyes lock on my figure before quickly flicking to other areas of our underground sanctuary. He struggles against his bonds again. "Who are you? What do you want from me?" he demands through clenched teeth._

" _I'm not going to hurt you. We need your help. I'm going to explain, and then, when you're calm, I'm going to untie you."_

 _He takes in my figure and I'm about to step out of the shadows when I'm distracted._

 _Both of our heads turn at the sound of footsteps. "No," I cry out. "Not yet!" But she doesn't stop walking down the dim hall towards Mulder, and I know it's no use to try and fight her. She's heard his voice after all this time, and she needs to see him, and maybe it's better this way, will make him believe and understand more quickly._

 _So I don't stop her. I stand and watch as she limps into the light and stands before Mulder. His eyebrows raise and his face takes on a look of both panic, fear and confusion. His breathing quickens and I can actually see the pulse thrumming on the side of his neck. His eyes absorb her mostly gray hair, her eyes, her face that is wrinkled and covered partially in burn scars, and then finds her eyes again._

 _She's crying. She reaches a hand out towards him and touches his cheek. He's too shocked to flinch. Tears fill his own eyes._

" _Mulder," she whispers in a quivering voice._

" _Scully?" he asks while shaking his head, not believing what he's seeing, and certainly not understanding._

 _Yes, Scully. His Scully, just ten years into a horrific future, aged more quickly by the stress of their lives and living without Mulder, and burned by the fires that consumed the planet nine years ago._

* * *

Of all the things I loathed growing up, playing Marco Polo was absolutely near the top of the list. While my siblings seemed to enjoy the game of it on any military base that came equipped with a pool, I was the consummate, compassionate loser. I felt sorry for those who blinded themselves with seemingly closed eyes while they searched, letting them tag me. "Dana's it!" they would shout with glee.

And, unable to cheat, I was the one who would then search for what seemed like endless hours as "it," eyes tightly closed, following the rules.

It's both prophetic and ironic and heartbreaking that I've spent the better part of twenty-three years playing a mind-fuck game of Marco Polo with one Fox Mulder. Blinded by people who don't play by the rules, ensnared by government conspiracies and alien DNA and my own inability to ever let Mulder go, I am once again stuck without him. I don't even know where to start looking. I never wanted to live this heartache again; the fact that I'm not certifiable yet is a miracle.

I've chosen anger over tears. And I've chosen to keep Mulder's current disappearance under wraps. We've barely gotten the X-Files back, and we are finding some semblance of normalcy with each other again. I want to find him and get back to our normal, which is a misnomer by most people's standards, but good enough for me.

This time it was me calling Skinner to let him know that I watched Mulder disappear right before my eyes. But there's more to it than what I was willing to share over the phone; something so unbelievably frightening and confusing that I can't put it into words.

"Give me seventy-two hours," I implored Skinner after Mulder had been gone for twenty-four, past the point when the other people who'd gone missing outside Jellystone Campground were returned. We both believed that if the FBI became aware that Fox Mulder was missing, yet again, they'd close the X-Files just as abruptly as they'd reopened them.

"You're going to need help," Skinner said.

He wasn't wrong there. I was working with the local police department and making up lies as to why Mulder wasn't around. I was spinning my wheels, looking over the case files and not seeing things clearly because I was too emotionally involved. I needed a second set of eyes and ears to talk to the previous abductees and the witnesses one more time, because my judgement was undoubtedly clouded. I needed to confirm what I wasn't yet willing to admit to anyone. I needed someone to talk to to keep my own sanity in check.

Unfortunately most of the help I could have relied upon in the past was now dead. Most, but maybe not all. "I have an idea," I responded before disconnecting with Skinner.

I'm not sure that Clyde Easter was totally listening when I called him from a payphone at the campground late yesterday morning, asking if he could help me. I never could get a read on that man. I'd met him only a few times when he'd been in DC on business and Mulder had dragged me along to meet Clyde for dinner. They'd been pleasant evenings, but Clyde seemed to read into Mulder and me a lot more than we were willing to admit to ourselves or each other the first and second time we met up with him. The third and last time I saw Clyde, when Mulder and I had finally taken the plunge and crossed that line that we both knew we'd inevitably cross one day, Clyde graced us with sly, knowing grins. But to his credit, he didn't say anything.

After that, Mulder was gone. And then we were both gone. I wasn't sure how much Clyde new of the past seventeen or so years since I'd last seen him. But he was someone Mulder had trusted to a point, and the first person I thought of on my very short list of "Who to call when Mulder is missing."

He was distracted when I called him. I could hear radio chatter in the background.

"What do you mean Mulder's missing?" he asked.

"He's gone," I sighed into the phone while blinking against the sting of tears in my eyes. "I need an extra set of eyes on this."

"And the FBI won't help you?" he asked.

"I...it's just that…" I tried to explain the delicacy of the situation, but was cut off by Clyde murmuring in my ear. "Jesus, Emily. What the fuck does she think she's doing? Damn it!"

Heavy breathing, more radio chatter, the unmistakable sound of gunfire. My heart skittered as it always had since 1997 when someone mentioned the name Emily.

"Clyde?" I implored quietly.

"I can send you some help. I'll fly her out under a different name. I don't want anyone knowing Interpol is helping with an X-Files' investigation. I'm sorry."

"Who?" I asked, my eyes wandering back up towards the thick green trees and the hillside where I'd last seen Mulder. When I'd called Clyde, I was hoping he could come.

"Emily Prentiss. I can email you some information about her. I'll fly her out tomorrow morning."

Numbly, I breathed out one of the many email accounts Mulder and I used that didn't come back to our names or the FBI. I told Clyde the name of the hotel where Prentiss could find me, figuring it would be better for a first meeting than a tent.

Last night, I stayed in the tent again, just in case Mulder was returned. I clutched the pillow he had used, finding the scent of him still lingering there. And I cried, thinking about how we'd been arguing right before he disappeared.

Just when I finally was getting him back, emotionally, he disappeared again.

My dreams last night were of a young man in a red baseball cap and sunglasses, holding Mulder in his arms. With a face that hadn't quite grown into his nose, and auburn facial hair that grew in the uneven patches of someone who was barely through puberty.

It's impossible. It's a hoax or an implanted vision. It can't be real. That's what I told myself when I left the campground in the hands of two local police officers who were patrolling because of the people who had been missing. I assured them we would handle the stake out tonight. I just wasn't specific about who the "we" was. They don't know Mulder is missing and the "we" in question includes myself and the head of UK Interpol.

I shake my head and look around the hotel room I'm currently in, thumbing through the pages of a file from Clyde I printed out at the library this morning. Emily Prentiss. She should be here any minute. By all accounts, she's an incredible agent, but I'm rethinking bringing someone else into this. Yesterday, I was desperate and devastated and angry. Today, I'm thinking that the most likely scenario here is that Mulder might be returned to me again, perhaps barely alive, and I'd best just go home and wait for however long that takes, as I'm so used to doing.

"Marco?" I mumble to myself as I look at the ID picture of a beautiful woman whose file indicates she can kick some serious ass.

In answer, there's a light tap on the hotel room door.

I sigh and stand and open it. And I'm met with a woman with dark brown eyes that could see through you, and an expression that hovers somewhere on the edges of curious, resigned and pissed off as hell.

"Agent Prentiss," I say as I stick out my hand.

She shakes it and says, "Emily is fine."

I nod and swallow past the dryness in my throat. Probably starting off our conversation by telling her that I had my ova ripped out of me a little over two decades ago which resulted in a daughter named Emily that I never even knew I had until I found her on her deathbed would not be the way to start this conversation.

"How about Prentiss. You can call me Scully," I manage.

She towers over me and surveys my face and stature. "I'm sorry you drew the short straw," I find myself saying.

At that, she smirks and shrugs. Apparently I've passed her initial inspection. She walks into my hotel room with her suitcase and briefcase. She surveys her file that's open on the small table in the corner of the room but she doesn't say anything.

Placing her briefcase on the table and leaving her bag on the floor, she sits in one of the chairs around the small table in the hotel room and slides her file towards herself. "I see Clyde's sent you the Reader's Digest condensed version."

I sit opposite her, trying to come up with some way to start a conversation. I'm the rational one when it comes to talking to other people in law enforcement, but if I want her help, I'm going to have to fess up to some outlandish things here and just hope she doesn't run from the room and call 911 to place me on a 72 hour psych hold. "You have an impressive record," I say.

She looks at me, one eyebrow raised. "It can't be a secret to you that I didn't land myself here because of what's in that file, but because of what's _not_ in it. I'm being punished for my behavior lately, so let's get on with it. What have you got and what do you need from me?"

I stare at her for a few seconds before sliding a much thicker manila folder from my bag. I flip it open, take a breath and start from the beginning.

"Mulder and I got here six days ago after hearing about two disappearances that took place three days apart. The men taken were returned to the place they were taken, naked, twenty-four hours later, with no memory of where they'd been or who had taken them. Only sketchy recollections of a bright room and white lights. While we were interviewing them, another man went missing from the same general area, and he was also returned twenty-four hours later. Mulder and I were at the campground when he was returned, but didn't see anyone besides the victim. We were able to track down two other people who had similar experiences, victims number one and two, but they never went to the police."

I flip the pictures of the victims on the table, all young men in their twenties, in order of when they went missing and when they were returned.

"Were they harmed?" Prentiss asks.

I shake my head, "No. They were even fed and given water according to the physical examinations I gave the the last three victims. But they have no memory of eating or drinking. No marks, no abrasions, no signs of assault of any kind."

"And now Agent Mulder is gone," she says.

"Yes, two mornings ago," I reply.

She looks at me sharply. "Five people all taken and returned within twenty-four hours, but it's been over forty-eight for Mulder. Why?"

Anger and sadness rise within me. _Because of what I told Mulder from the very beginning. That this all felt like a trap._

"I think Mulder may have been the target all along," I say without blinking.

"You think someone set up five kidnappings in order to lure you here?" she asks with a hint of disbelief in her voice.

"Yes," I say firmly. "I don't think it was any mistake that he and I were in those woods two days ago. Especially now."

"What do you mean?" she asks.

I pull out four more pictures from my back, artists sketches based on what the witnesses saw. "In every case except the first, there was a witness who experienced something similar to what I experienced when Mulder was taken. A feeling of numbness, falling to the ground, unable to move or talk. They got a good look at the unsub. This is who the witness of the second kidnapping saw, and this is what the witness of the third kidnapping saw." I stop the monotony of where I'm going with this and just lay out the pictures.

Prentiss sees it right away, shaking her head slightly. "They all saw someone who looked like the previous kidnapping victim." She looks back up. "How do you explain that?"

"Mulder and I have seen something like this before. People who can change their appearance or people who can make you see something other than what is actually there."

"And what did you see?" she asks me without skipping a beat.

"The fifth kidnapping victim, but then for a second I saw what looked like someone else..." That's as far as I'm willing to go for now. "He said he was sorry before he disappeared with Mulder. And by disappear, I mean vanished into thin air. He was running up the hill with Mulder in his arms like he weighed nothing, and then he jumped. There was a flash of light and static in the air for a moment, and then I could move again and they were both gone."

I close my eyes briefly, seeing Mulder and I there in the woods. Me raising my voice because he'd snuck out of the tent while I was still sleeping and my heart was hammering in fear by the time I found him zipping up near a tree away from our tent. I was livid. When I'd agreed that we should investigate, it was with much trepidation, and he'd promised that he wouldn't leave my side. And I'd been right to be worried. Because seconds after I found him after relieving himself and started laying into him for leaving the tent without telling me, there was a static charge in the air that made my hair stand on end, and then minutes later, a man was there and I was on the ground, unable to move.

When I open my eyes again, Prentiss is studying my face intently. I feel myself flush slightly under her scrutiny, but to her credit, she doesn't laugh at me or look at me incredulously. It actually surprises me. She's taking this seriously, even if there's a part of her that likely thinks I'm crazy.

"What do you think the flash of light was?" she asks carefully.

"Not anything I've ever seen before," I reply quietly.

"No witness for the first kidnapping victim? That seems wrong," she says after a few seconds.

I nod. "I know. And that's where I'd like to start. I'm hoping someone new can get that first victim to open up, because he swears he was out there alone when he disappeared, but I don't think that can be true. This unsub wanted to be seen. He wanted us to catch wind of the disappearances as quickly as possible and compel us to get here. "

She looks at the pictures on the table and then back up at me. "You think you somehow caught a glimpse of the unsub's real face, and you think that whomever the mystery first witness saw is what the unsub actually looks like. You want to see if they match."

I nod and Prentiss stands. "Then let's go. Getting people to talk happens to be a something I _can_ do well. Even now."

I'm not entirely sure what she means by that, but it's clear based on what I overheard in the background when I spoke to Clyde on the phone and what she's trying to convey now is that she was serious when she said she was being punished by being sent to help me. For someone who likely believes anything paranormal is a crock of shit, she's behaving professionally and admirably.

"Thank you," I say to her as I stand.

I've been keeping on my stoic mask for two days now, but something cracks under her gaze. She seems to see a hell of a lot more than most people do because her face softens at the look in my eyes and she smiles, dramatically changing the seriousness of her face. "You're welcome. We'll find him," she says confidently.

I desperately want to believe her.

* * *

"Do you need a bag?" the salesperson asks cheerfully.

I shake my head. "No thank you." I pick up the hiking boots in their shoe box and take my receipt. Apparently, I'm going for a little trip to the woods and the shoes I packed won't cut it. Joy.

I'm half tempted to dump the shoe box in the trashcan outside the sporting goods store, take the fake ID Clyde gave me, and just disappear. I put up a good front when I worked with Dana Scully earlier today, but I still feel like I'm conducting an investigation in the middle of a steeping pile of unbelievable bullshit.

Still, I'm hoping to get my job back when this is all over, at least long enough to reestablish a little bit of dignity in my career. And no matter how I feel about this particular investigation, it's plain to see that Scully is devastated and desperate no matter how hard she's trying to hide it. It's also as plain as the nose on my face that she's not telling me everything yet, but I won't run out on her. I'm going to play this game to its finish, and I'm going to do it with the mindset of a profiler and follow along with whatever wild theory Dana Scully believes until we find Fox Mulder.

"Flashing lights and people disappearing into thin air," I mutter as I open the door to the rental car. "People who can change what their face looks like," I growl to myself as I toss the shoes on the floor in front of the passenger seat and slam the door closed again.

The one good thing that came from this afternoon is that the first kidnapping victim finally cracked and told us about his girlfriend, who is seventeen and had lied to her parents about staying with a friend's family for the weekend when in fact she was off getting busy with her twenty-one year old boyfriend in the woods. We cornered her when her high school got out for the day, and once she realized that we would not be speaking with her parents, and that her boyfriend would not get in trouble because she had reached the age of consent, she finally admitted to what she saw in the woods a couple of weeks ago.

Now Scully is with the young woman and a sketch artist at the local precinct and I'm out shopping for apparel more suitable for a tent than a hotel. It's only four o'clock in Chicago, but my body on its London time says ten o'clock at night. I'm starving and I have a few hours before I'm supposed to meet Scully back at the hotel and we drive to the campground together. She said she had a few errands of her own to run, whatever that means.

I bite nervously at my lower lip and glance at my laptop in the passenger seat and open it, looking at the email message that is still open on my screen. When I first got on the plane this morning in London, a bit of nostalgia and guilt gnawed at me, knowing I was heading back towards the United States. I might not have been going to DC, but I still missed my friends that I'd been ignoring for months. I went back through my email once the flight was in the air and started reading all the messages from the team since I'd last seen them. I breezed past the condolence messages about my mom passing away. I cringed at Hotch's email that I never answered, asking me if I wanted the team there at the funeral. The messages were frequent for awhile, and then slowly tapered off the longer I didn't answer. JJ's final email came about six weeks ago, saying that she was there for me if I needed to talk, that she missed me and was worried about me.

Garcia kept up with emails about once a week, just checking in, and about a month ago, she sent an email about what was going on with Morgan that made my stomach plummet and tears fill my eyes. That poor, amazing man.

He's been in the back of my mind ever since I read Garcia's words. The fact that we're both coincidentally in the Chicago area hasn't escaped me. Nor has that fact that according to Garcia, he's fixing up the rec center where he was abused for so many years and is in hibernation from talking to the team, much like I am. I don't know if what he's doing is therapeutic or some sentence of self-imposed flagellation; if I had to guess, I'd say it was a combination of the two. Regardless, I can barely stand even the idea of what he must be feeling and living right now.

I glance at my watch and then at the GPS unit in the rental car where I plugged in the address to the rec center before I even left the airport. I'm not supposed to meet up with Scully for three hours. I have time. I'm not sure he'll be happy to see me, but if he doesn't want me there, I'll just leave. After all my time in these past months spent avoiding people, I'm suddenly almost desperate to see him.

I glance at the burger place next to the sporting goods store and smile slightly, remembering when it was Morgan and me partnered and investigating a case; better times when we'd stop to grab a bite to eat, discuss actual behavioral science, not flashing lights and people who can seemingly change their appearance.

Clyde didn't want anyone to know I'm here, because he doesn't want Interpol mixed up with the X-Files. I can't say I blame him. And Scully doesn't want anyone to know Mulder is missing just yet. But if there's one person I can trust unequivocally, it's Derek Morgan. And I miss my friend.

* * *

 _He calls her Dana almost right away, needing to differentiate between the future version of the woman he loves and the present version. That's fine, since I mostly call her Dana as well. Mostly._

 _I watch Mulder check her over for several minutes while she stands mutely in the dim kitchen without flinching. He lifts her shirt to find the scars and faded tattoo he knows are on her body. He lifts the back of her hair to feel for the subdermal implant. He studies her hands. He brushes his finger over the mole on her face._

 _Only when the physical exam is over does he start with the questions, being methodical like I knew he would be, keeping the questions to when they were first partnered together, before the implant was placed in her, when they might have been able to have whispered secrets. One question after another, and she eventually sinks down in the chair, answering softly, clasping his hand in hers. He seems to forget I'm even in the room for awhile, they both do._

 _Finally, his questions come to an end and he looks towards me again, curious, if cautious, still not believing but willing to listen. I step out of the shadows fully and face him. He blinks at my face, studying me for a long time before nodding, his lips quivering and tears in his eyes for the briefest moment. Ultimately, though, he controls his emotions well while I explain as best as I understand about how any of this is possible._

 _I then launch into my nightmarish story, which eventually becomes his nightmare. As I'm telling it, Dana keeps one hand in his and one hand reaches for mine. "I know, Mulder," she whispers. "It's like your sister. I'm so sorry."_

 _It nearly breaks him, having to listen to everything that happened to me over the years; he puts his head down on the table and sobs, apologizing to me, apologizing to Dana._

 _When I finish speaking, silence descends over the room for several seconds, the only sound his ragged breathing. Suddenly, he stands from the chair and bangs his fist on the table, making us jump. "I can't leave Scully again! You get her, and I'll help you. Whatever this is, if it's real or just an illusion, my life is with her, not you," he says, pointing at Dana, his tone softening when he looks at her face. "You know what I mean," he whispers. "You know she's back there going crazy right now."_

" _I know," I chime in. "We both do. But it weakens me when I bring people through to our side. It's not so bad returning them. But when I bring people in, I'm weak for awhile and I can't shield her or the chip in her neck. They'll find her. So if I bring your Scully through, you need to understand that you're going to have to put her in an iron box with a version of herself ten years in the future for many hours until I'm fully functioning again. And if she wakes up before we can take her out of there, imagine what that will be like for her."_

 _Mulder looks horrified at the thought. He grimaces and looks down. "I can't leave her out there alone. I promised her I'd never do that to her again."_

" _You did, Mulder" Dana responds. "He'll go get her, but he needs to rest for a couple of days before he's strong enough to do that. And we need to think about how he's going to approach her so she doesn't think she's woken up buried alive with her aged doppelganger."_


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: The other segments of this chapter are challenging me, and I've been writing and re-writing for days. But I'm happy with this portion, so I'll give it to you now and keep plodding along with the rest. For those of you who never watched the X-Files, I'm hoping that by the next chapter or perhaps the one after, many things will be cleared up for you. Thanks for reading! xoxo_

* * *

One good thing about using my own money to renovate the rec center is that I have the choice of whom to use for my supplies. The mom and pop hardware store in this neighborhood that's been around since I was a kid is seeing more business from me in a matter of weeks than they probably do in months.

"Can you close the door behind you when you leave? It locks automatically." I ask Zeke, son of said mom and pop, who's just delivered the sheet rock I need for the upstairs.

"Sure thing, Mr. Morgan," he responds.

I don't bother telling him that Derek is fine. I've told him that several times, but he still insists on calling me Mr. Morgan, even though we're close to the same age. I simply nod and shake his hand and turn to survey the stacks of sheetrock we'd just brought upstairs.

The second floor of the rec center looks like a skeletal version of itself - no offices, no hidden corners, just open space where there could be ping pong tables and kids hanging out. The downstairs and the showers will be more difficult to deal with, but for now, I feel like I've made progress. The old sheet rock has come down, new headers have been installed where they need to be. There could be a few desks in one area for the people who staffed this place in the future; cubicles with half walls, absolutely no offices with closed doors.

The destruction of my childhood nightmares has taken an emotional toll over the past couple of weeks, but I think I'm getting better, at least during the day. The nights are still hard, when I often find myself wondering about Hank and what milestones I've missed.

I stand and stare at my work, shaking thoughts of Savannah and Hank from my head, when I hear footsteps on the stairs. "Did you forget something, Zeke?" I ask without turning around.

"You are tearing shit up," says a voice that reaches straight into my soul.

I spin quickly and there is none other than Emily Prentiss standing at the top of the stairs, briefcase over her shoulder, plastic take out bag in her hand.

My immediate response is to feel like my privacy has been violated. "Did the team send you?" I ask defensively.

Her smile falters. "No," she breathes. "I'm here on a case. I knew you were here because of an email from Garcia, but they don't know I'm in Chicago. No one does."

She looks uncertain and a little hurt and wary, and I try to gather my emotions. I'm going to have to talk with my mother about how much she's sharing with Penelope, but it's not Emily's fault. My emotions surprise me; I'm fucking glad to see her when I never thought I'd be happy about anything ever again. I smile slightly. "Sorry, I just wasn't expecting anyone."

She shrugs, the plastic bag in her hand crinkling with noise slightly. "Why would you?"

I watch her face as she looks around the place before her eyes settle back on me. I touch the beard on my face and the hair on my head self-consciously; I stopped shaving the day I started working on this place. She smiles again. "It's a good look. Different, but good," she says. "You've got a little gray there, Derek Morgan. Very distinguished."

At that, I manage to laugh, and it sounds strange to me. It feels like forever since I last laughed.

"I see you're holding onto your hair color," I respond.

She smirks. "Feria. Midnight Black. Buy stock because I seem to need touch ups more and more lately."

I laugh again and it feels good. I expected Garcia to show up here, or maybe Hotch, or maybe the entire team for an intervention. I had carefully planned words for them when they did, the gist of which was, "Kindly fuck off, I'm not ready to talk yet." But of all the people I expected to ambush me in the middle of my self-imposed solidarity, Emily Prentiss was not even on my list of possibilities, which must be why I'm standing here with a stupid grin on my face instead of telling her to get the hell out.

"What's in the bag?" I ask, nodding my chin towards the plastic clutched in her hand.

"Our usual," she responds. "Hamburger and fries for you, salad for me."

At that, I find myself grinning wider, unable to help myself. "This requires a knife. Come on."

She follows me back to the small area where there's a sink and a mini-fridge. A futon and a lamp complete the picture of what is currently my home. I could stay with my mother, but staying here allows me to keep odd hours, allows me work all night when I can't sleep.

I wash my hands while her eyes travel over my living arrangements, taking in the crates of clothing and a few books. She reaches over to the window sill and picks up the picture of the team, the one she's in, and smiles slightly before replacing it.

I keep quiet and take the bag from her hand and open the two styrofoam containers.

She first started stealing fries from me after she'd been with the BAU for about three months. A couple of months after that, she started gazing longingly at my burger while her fork was poised in her salad with disinterest. A few weeks after that, we came to an arrangement: I'd order the burger and fries, she'd order the salad, and we'd split the lot.

I cut the burger in half and divide the salad and fries. I grab one of the containers and hand it to her. "I'll be healthier and you'll be happier this way," I say, which is what I'd said to her the first time I'd given up and just split our meals, back on the road in some podunk town in Michigan in 2007, if my memory serves me correctly.

At that, she finally laughs, and it's like a symphony to my ears that I've gone too long without hearing.

"You want a beer?" I inquire.

She shakes her head. "I'd love a beer...or ten, but I'm on a case."

I nod and reach towards the fridge, open the door and pull out a bottle of water. I toss it to her and she catches it easily, a small smile of relief on her lips. She thought I might not let her stay, and she's happy I have.

I head over to the futon with my food and my own bottle of water, and she follows. I sit down, and so does she, one leg on the floor and one leg up on the futon, knee bent and her body facing towards me. I turn to mirror her position. I have a million questions for her, but can't settle on one in my mind. She seems to know what's going on with me, but I know very little about what's going on in her life right right now. I can't stop looking at her face, a face I never really thought I'd see again. After over two years of not seeing Emily, and over a month of only really speaking with my mother, I'm not quite sure I know how to start a conversation.

Before I get a chance to ask anything, she's talking. "It's ridiculous to ask how you are, because I think I know, but I'm glad you've chosen to tear down walls instead of doing something stupid or dangerous. This meal wouldn't be quite as satisfying behind plexiglass in a jail cell visiting room."

And just like that, with two sentences, Emily Prentiss has stripped me down to my core. She knows me as well as I know her; she knows my anger and grief had to go somewhere, and without a job, where I chose to focus my energy might not have been as benign as renovating a building, even though it's this particularly building and not really benign at all.

I watch her spear a piece of lettuce with a plastic fork and my eyes are drawn to her fingernails, which look almost painful with the way they've been picked and chewed. She catches me staring and I open my mouth to speak, but she beats me to the punch before I can even catch a breath.

"Six months ago I needed the BAU's help to catch a serial murderer. You probably know that. Right after that, my mom died. Maybe you know that, too. I didn't deal with it well. I'm not dealing with it well. I've gone completely rogue and unpredictable at work. Something just flares up in me when there's a case and I've become a junky for the the adrenaline rush. It's like I waited my whole life to fix the things I needed to fix, and now everything I needed to work on is gone. My parents are dead. I have absolutely no family left at all. I have a sizeable inheritance and several properties around the world, none of which I've been able to touch or even go see. My boyfriend broke up with me. I wanted him to. And I've been tearing down proverbial walls in my own way since then. I feel stupid for telling you this, because your situation is so much worse than mine. You're dealing with it better than me, probably. Or maybe not. I'm not sure this is good for you, living in this place, but who am I to have an opinion? We've barely shared any words in a few years. But I've missed you. That's why I'm here."

The half-burger in my hand doesn't reach my mouth. Slowly, I lower it to the styrofoam container and wipe my hands on a napkin. My instinct is to ask her to leave because I'm feeling too exposed right now, but I push that down. She's exposed, too. Emily Prentiss is not one to open up about her feelings, at all. The Emily I know would skirt around the edges of her emotions briefly, and then bring the hammer down, closing up with silence, biting sarcasm, or a joke. I think she just said everything she did to put us on some even emotional footing, so I wouldn't ask her to leave. She's here for me, and she's here for herself. I don't know how to deal with me, but I'm not so far gone that I can't help her. Her cheeks are tinged pink, like she's embarrassed. Her hand shakes slightly while she holds her fork. She didn't plan to share so much, but the words are out there now.

I stare at her for several seconds before clearing my throat. "I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center."

She lifts her eyebrow at me and takes a bite of her burger, her mouth smiling while she chews. I watch her as she swallows and smiles wider. "Quoting Kilgore Trout already, huh? Is that your round about way of trying to profile my behavior, because I told you I'd end you if you did that to me again, remember?"

I nod with a small smile and pop a french fry in my mouth. She's been in this place for hardly more than ten minutes, and already I've smiled more than I collectively have in the past several weeks. "You're the one who laid all your business on my lap," I finally reply. "Is that what you're doing, living on the edge in hopes to see more clearly?"

She shakes her head, her hair falling across her shoulders softly. "I'm not sure. If it is what I'm trying to do, it's not working. Is that what you're doing?"

"Yes," I respond, the immediacy surprising me. Is that what I've been doing? Up until this very moment, I've felt so directionless and depressed.

She nods like she knew that was the answer. We both take bites of our food and contemplate one another. She glances away from my eyes and looks around again. "Do you think this will be good for you, once it's done?"

I look around the space and shrug. "I'm not sure. I think it will feel like closure on something I haven't totally gotten past. At least I'm hoping so. And then maybe I'll be able to move forward in a new direction." Again, I am surprised by my response, at how easy it came to me when I've felt like I was floundering. "I forgot how easy you are to talk to."

She smiles at me, but then her face falls slightly and she looks down at her lap. "Derek," she sighs. "I'm a mess."

"You're not alone," I say, and at those words I do the last thing I want to do: I break down, and it's completely beyond my control. Crying around my mother is one thing, falling apart in front of Emily is another matter entirely. This is so outside the realm of how I'm used to behaving that it makes me feel uncomfortable, like I don't know myself at all anymore. But once the tears start, I can't stop them.

My food container is taken from my lap in an instant and I see Emily's denim-clad knees before me on the futon, right in front of my leg. Her arms are tentative as they wrap around me but as soon as her hands land on my back and squeeze, I find myself clinging to her, sobbing into her shoulder, unable to contain the anguish I've been trying to forget by tearing this place apart.

"He wasn't mine," I gasp. "He was never my son."

"Shhhhh. I know. You don't have to explain to me."

I nod into her shoulder, finding that place within me again that I'd long forgotten; the place where Emily and I didn't need a whole lot of words to communicate just fine. I pull her more tightly against me, and she adjusts her legs, coming easily towards me, giving me the comfort of her arms, until she is in my lap. She holds onto me, for endless minutes until my eyes run dry and all that's left is me taking gulping, shaky breaths. She is still using the same hair products she used to; the coconut and vanilla scent calms me as I inhale deeply.

I slowly release my hold on her, embarrassed at my outburst, but when she pulls away from me and moves back on the futon, I see that there are tears in her eyes, too, and nothing but understanding. She kisses my cheek and rubs her thumb across my beard before settling back into her previous position, and I reach forward to wipe the tears off her cheek.

We're both quiet, and we use our food to bridge the silence, eating and not talking, glancing at each other occasionally, keeping our opinions about the current status of the other to ourselves, letting each other regroup from the thickness of the words and emotions shared in such a short amount of time.

"How are you paying for all of this?" she asks as she finishes her food and places the container on the floor.

"Savannah bought me out of the house. She must have borrowed the money from her parents. I'm not sure, I didn't ask her. She couldn't have refinanced without me signing, so that's what makes the most sense. I'm going to have to talk to her at some point, but I can't face her yet. We need to deal with the deed on the house, and we need to get a divorce." _And I need to get my name off a birth certificate,_ I think but don't say, afraid the water works will start up again.

"You're entitled to the time you need. Maybe when you're finished with this place, you'll be ready," she says while laying a hand on my knee.

I realize how thankful I am for her presence, her gentle acceptance of my choices right now, how well she knows me. She might have joked about me profiling her a few minutes ago, but she's got my number, too.

I'm on the brink of getting emotional again, but I don't want to. I decide on a change in topic and point at her briefcase. "So what kind of Interpol business are you doing in Chicago?"

She shakes her head and grimaces slightly. "None. I'm getting the equivalent of a spanking right now for my behavior at work."

I raise my eyebrow and she pulls a manila folder out of her briefcase. "I was told by Clyde that if I wanted to keep my job, I was to come to Chicago under an assumed name and assist with an X-File. Apparently he and Fox Mulder crossed paths at Oxford and became friends."

Both my eyebrows shoot up at that news. I whistle, and then I laugh. I can't help it.

"What?" Emily asks.

I shake my head. "No-nonsense Emily Prentiss working an X-file is equivalent to me taking up ballet."

She chuckles, and we're back to some equilibrium, our emotional outburst and embarrassing truths we shared temporarily forgotten. "Tell me about it," she mutters while rolling her eyes. "The X-Files were reopened a few months ago. And now, Fox Mulder is missing. I'm assisting Scully in trying to find him."

"That man disappears more frequently than socks in a dryer," I say.

Her eyebrows raise at me and she grins. It's my turn to ask, "What?"

"I thought the exact same thing when Clyde told me. Your Fran-isms apparently rubbed off on me and stuck. Do you know them? Mulder and Scully?"

I shake my head. "Only on the periphery, and not for very long. I was only with the FBI for a few years before the X-Files shut down. I know their solve rate rivaled that of the BAU's, but I don't really know what they were solving. Their cases didn't exactly make the headlines like ours did. Gideon knew Mulder pretty well, or at least he respected him. There were a lot of rumors about the X-Files and about Mulder and Scully when I first joined the FBI, but Gideon put a stop to any gossiping on our team, reminding us that the FBI once thought the behavioral analysis was bunk and that it had started in the basement, too."

"I forgot about that," she responds.

"Yep. Fox Mulder took over the basement when Gideon and Rossi were moved upstairs and allowed to create a team." I pause and remember something, "She was pregnant in 2001."

"Scully was?" Emily asks, surprised.

"Yes. Fox Mulder was missing then, too. And then he was dead, or presumed dead. I'm not certain. Maybe he was just undercover. It was all very hush hush, but most people assumed that it was Mulder's baby."

"Huh. She didn't mention anything about having a child to me, but I only talked with her for a few hours, and only about the case."

I lean forward and flip open the folder that's sitting on the futon between us. "So what have you got, Agent Prentiss?"

She smiles and pats my knee once more before taking some pictures and sketches from the folder. "I'd say it was a standard missing person's case with a serial kidnapper, but there is something weird going on here. No doubt about that."

I listen, intrigued in the case, and overwhelmed that she's right here in front of me at all. Overwhelmed because I don't want her to leave. My eyes take in her face and her hands as she talks, and I remember the last time she looked like this, edgy and uncertain and stoic. I almost lost her then, and I don't plan on reliving that.

For the first time in weeks, I find myself motivated by something other than self-loathing. It's a fierce sense of protectiveness for the woman sitting in front of me laying out a case. If she knew, she'd probably hit me or rip my balls off. But it makes the fog I've been living in in my mind lift.

I listen to her throwing out theories about illusionists and people who are good with stage make-up. She's not buying into anything that makes this case an X-File, but searching for very human, if strange, reasoning to this case.

"Where are you camping at Jellystone?" I ask her when she's done explaining everything.

She raises an eyebrow and pulls out a map. "Why?" she asks.

 _Because this is all weird, Emily, and there's no way in hell I'm letting you go out there alone, with someone you hardly know,_ I think. But I value my life , even as disastrous as it is now, and I know how Emily can be when her actions or stability feel questioned, so I don't voice that thought.

Instead, I shrug. "Just curious. We used to camp out there when I was a kid."

"Oh," she says, buying that statement. She opens the map and points.


	4. Chapter 4

_A/N - My house has become the place to hang out for all of the teenagers and pre-teens in the world, it seems. This presented quite a problem for me as my computer is in the middle of the main "let's hang here and annoy the crap out of your parents" area. Still, I'd rather them here than elsewhere. I've invested in noise-cancelling headphones and life is good again._

 _This chapter was an agonizing labor of love, where I tried to fill my non-x-files followers in on a backstory without overwhelming them with ten years of details. Many stops and starts and deleting and editing. But I'm good with it now, as best as I can be...and now we can get on with things I hope! :) Cheers._

* * *

I've made many promises to myself throughout the years that I have broken piece by piece until they were obliterated.

 _Always trust science, Dana. Find the truth in what's real instead of the inexplicable paranormal._ That promise to myself was challenged on my very first case with Mulder, though I denied it for a long time.

 _Thou does not covet thy partner._ That promise was out the window long before I started bending my rules on science.

 _Coveting is fine. But never act on it._ That was a simmering pot that was destined to boil over. It took six years and unimaginable heartache to do so, but Mulder and I were both waiting and ready for it when it happened. Even though it came with doubts, and agonizing starts and stops; even though there are times that I still question that initial, questionable move.

So, yes, I have a litany of broken promises to myself that landed me where I am today. And if I didn't so desperately love the man who brought me on this mind-boggling journey with him, I would have killed him long ago.

But one promise I swore I'd never break for myself or Mulder or anyone else, was this. I swore I would let our son live his life with his adoptive parents and I wouldn't put salt in the open wound that is my heart by trying to find out about him.

I knew the information was out there. I knew the name of his adoptive parents, something I've never told Mulder, which is a fact he'd find both unforgivable and understandable. I just never wanted Mulder's quest to be part of our son's life, and I know deep down that Mulder wouldn't want that either. But he wouldn't be able to help himself when it came to finding our son if he had the information. And then I don't know what would happen.

So I've held the information close to the vest and held myself back from searching, but it's impossible to keep myself from looking now. Armed with the sketch from the witness of the first kidnapping that looks like a perfect combination of my brother Charlie and one missing Fox Mulder, I head to the library.

My fingers shake as I begin typing at the computer. My heart is hammering in my chest and I feel hopelessly confused and alone. Our son would be fifteen now, and I'm thinking that in this world where everyone shares all of their business online, it shouldn't be too hard to find out where he and his family are now.

Only it's not that easy. There are William Van de Kamp's out there, but none of them are our William. And his adoptive parents don't have anything out there either in terms of social media. I start scrolling through news stories with their names, and finally find mention of them back in 2005. It's a short police-blotter article in the local paper in their small Pennsylvania town. About how the Van de Kamp's seemingly up and disappeared. Neighbors were concerned about the family and called the police, but the police saw no foul play. The furniture had been covered, clothing and personal effects were missing from the home, but it was all very organized, like they had packed. After some investigation, the police concluded that there was no crime, that perhaps the Van de Kamps had decided to leave for awhile. One sentence in the article stuck out. A quote from the neighbor, "I know they were upset about what happened at William's preschool, but it's unlike them to take off like this. She would have told me at least. I'm sure of it."

"William," I whisper, tears stinging my eyes. My heart hammers, wondering what could have happened at his preschool when he was four years old.

I'm cut off from FBI resources right now; I don't trust any search Skinner could do for me, nor the Chicago PD. It's possible Prentiss has the resources to conduct a safe search, but digging up my past has also brought to the surface the renewed emotion of fear, that I should trust no one. And even if I could trust her, the very thought of dragging another person down into the catastrophic shithole that is my life is not something I want. I wouldn't wish my life on anyone, and I regret ever calling Clyde Easter.

Taking a shaky breath, I conduct a search on the neighbor's name and secure a phone number before closing out of the browser and exiting the library. I walk quickly down the block, looking for a working payphone I know I probably won't find. The campground was one thing; those phones are maintained because cell phone reception there is spotty. But in the middle of town, those phones that allow me to take out a quarter and make an anonymous call when I need to are nowhere to be found.

In the green space near the library, I see a couple enjoying a picnic dinner in the evening air. They seem friendly enough, so I approach them. "Excuse me, I'm so sorry to interrupt. I've had a hell of a day. I lost my cell phone earlier, and now my car won't start. Would it be possible to borrow your phone to make a couple of calls?"

The man nods amicably, "That is a hell of a day." He hands me his phone.

I point to a nearby tree and say, "I'll just stand right there so I don't interfere with your dinner."

Taking a few steps away, I dial *67 and the woman's number, the neighbor of the Van de Camps. I quickly make up a fake name and introduce myself as a reporter for a local paper. My story is flimsy, but it's the best I can come up with when I'm feeling like the ground has dropped out from beneath me. Yet again.

"I was doing some research about families that I have disappeared because we have a family in our area who has done just that. The police say it looks like they took off on their own, but the neighbors claim they'd never just leave without telling anyone. I came across an article about a similar situation with the Van de Kamps, and your name was in it. I was wondering if you could tell me what the outcome was?

Marcia's voice is friendly, but quiet. "Oh, John and Christina. It turns out the police were right about that one. Christina called me a few days after they left to let me know that they were safe, that John's mother had had a heart attack and passed away, and they'd likely be staying there for a while to take care of her home and belongings."

"So they came back?" I ask.

"No, they didn't. They decided to stay where they were and sold their home here. It's such a tragedy what happened to them. I know people thought there was something strange about their son William; his preschool teacher swore up and down that he could move things without touching them, but I think that's a bunch of malarkey from a woman for whom it wouldn't surprise me if she had a pint before breakfast in the morning. All I remember is the sweet child who liked to come over and smell my roses in the spring. I really liked all of them. Unfortunately they all passed away in a house fire in 2009. They were living in John's mother's old farmhouse outside of Madison, Wisconsin. It was an electrical fire. Such a shame. "

My heart shatters at those words and I'm on the verge of completely dissolving into tears. I shut off the phone without so much as a thank you or goodbye, and return it to the couple. I can't manage to say anything more to them than a quiet, "Thank you," before turning to head back to the library.

The man calls out, "Are you okay?"

I turn and nod. "My husband's coming."

That couldn't be any farther from the truth on so many levels.

William can't be dead. He just can't be. I would have known, I would have felt it.

I trudge slowly back towards the library. A quick search finds the story about the house fire, but I'm not interested in what the article says. I only hone in on what it doesn't say. There is no mention of DNA, no mention of bodies that anyone was able to identify.

Numbly, I close the browser yet again. I take a deep breath and wonder who I could possibly call. I have no answers. A few months after the X-files reopened and I left behind my career in medicine in order to rejoin Mulder on our quest for the truth, I am once again in that place where nothing seems safe.

I am on autopilot. A woman with a broken and frightened heart, a body without a home, a mother without a child. Strangely...sadly...perhaps predictably...I find some comfort in these feelings. It's what I've known most in the past couple of decades.

XXXXX

* * *

 _I remember the first time we ran. We weren't running from bad people; we were running from rumors and a teacher who saw me make the entire contents of a bookshelf take flight. It was the first time anger made me thoughtless, but not the last._

 _That summer, in a ramshackle farmhouse in Wisconsin, my parents tested me. They weren't afraid of me; they loved me completely. But in order for us to have any sort of life, I needed to be able to control the things that I could make happen. For weeks, I was made to feel frustrated in almost cruel ways, but I knew my parents weren't trying to be cruel. They were trying to make me learn._

 _They'd buy me candy and then eat it themselves. They'd give me a toy, and then snatch it away at random. They'd promise to take me places and not follow through. My burly father would sometimes trip me and push me down - not to hurt me, but to make me angry._

 _At first, that house suffered quite a bit. Pictures flew off walls, dishes were smashed, once I managed to stand in the living room and snap the top off the sink in the kitchen, spraying water everywhere._

 _But I eventually learned. I learned to breathe deep and let the anger out without moving or harming anything. I learned to walk away. I wasn't broken, far from it. At night in my bedroom, I'd test my powers to manipulate inanimate objects - bringing toys to me while I sat in bed, flipping the pages of a book without moving my fingers, flicking off the light in my bedroom while I was cocooned under the covers. I learned from my parents that I had to control myself, that I would be the master of my future if I could master my anger and my abilities._

 _My situation was not something you could find in a child development book, and my parents simply did the best they could. They never thought of giving up on me, and I learned perseverance from them._

 _I started kindergarten in the fall, and we managed almost three years of relative normalcy and peace._

 _The voices started the summer before third grade, hundreds of them suddenly and all at once during a little league tournament. I didn't know what was happening, and to say I freaked out would be putting it mildly. I screamed right there at first base, threw my glove to the ground, and clutched my hands over my ears, but the voices still came._

 _My coach ran towards me and the cacophony of hundreds of voices at once ceased to the single pinprick of his when he was right in front of me. He put his hand on me, and it was like looking right into his soul, everything played out like a horror movie in my mind._

" _You're not supposed to touch little kids like that!" I shouted._

 _He quickly moved his hand off my arm like that's what I meant. I whipped my head around to look at my friend Ryan who was behind me in left field and then back at coach. "You hurt Ryan!" I shouted. I watched in horror as coach was lifted off his feet and flew through the air before landing hard on the ground near the pitcher._

 _And then my parents were there, picking me up and whisking me away. I sobbed on my father's shoulders and kept saying that coach was hurting Ryan, that I heard him in his mind. That I saw what he'd done._

 _They remained silent, but I could hear them, too. "Don't be scared," I sobbed. "I'm sorry."_

 _My father kept me in his arms as my mother made the hour-long drive home. I cried until I passed out, sleep providing me with the silence I so desperately craved. I stirred only when the truck hit the rutted driveway that lead to our house. It was dusk, the wind kicking up dust and making the endless miles of wheat rustle in the hot evening air. And my parents were silent, but they had been discussing disappearing again. I heard them._

" _We need to pack," my mother said as she parked the truck in front of the house. Her hand was shaking, but gentle, as she reached across the seat and touched my cheek._

" _I don't want to leave!" I shouted, and the sobbing started again. I pulled free from my father's arms, opened the truck door, and took off into the fields, running faster than I ever had, running faster than I ever thought a person could possibly run._

XXXX

* * *

The drive back to the hotel is pleasant. I roll down the window in my rental car and take in the evening air, find peace within myself in ways I couldn't quite imagine before seeing Morgan. I feel moderately relaxed for the first time in months. I'd nearly forgotten what it was like to have him as a friend; I'd nearly forgotten how much we truly understood and cared about each other.

He's broken and sad, and I'm broken and lost, but we muddled our way back to equilibrium in many ways in the couple of hours I spent with him.

Talking through the case with him was like old times, even though the evidence we had wasn't something we were used to dealing with. It was still enough to make me feel like I had my feet under me again, a feeling that I'd missed in recent months.

One thing our conversation clarified for me is that I really don't want anyone to know I'm working an X-File - it's not exactly a career boost, and I don't need anymore dings against me right now. I left my laptop, wallet and personal cell phone with Derek, deciding to stick with my burn phone and my fake ID and accompanying credit card completely for the duration of this case.

"Do you mind?" I asked him when I took all things belonging to Emily Prentiss out of my briefcase.

"Not at all," he said with that smile I never really allowed myself to miss. "That means you have to come back."

At that, I grinned and hugged him goodbye. I definitely wanted to come back and visit with him again.

The drive to the hotel takes a little longer than I anticipated because of traffic, so I'm ten minutes late meeting up with Scully. I park my car, grab my new boots and my much lighter briefcase, and head towards her room. My knock on the door is immediately answered. Gone is the woman I met earlier today who seemed wholly worried about Mulder, but consumed with the need to act strong. In her place is a Dana Scully with puffy eyes that flash with fear and anguish, clutching a gun in her hand.

I open my mouth to ask what's wrong, but she pulls me into the hotel room and puts her finger to her lips, indicating that I should be quiet. I glance around the room and notice my suitcase is open and empty; a filled duffle bag is on the bed instead. _What the hell?_

Scully grabs a wand off the small table in the room with her left hand and starts moving it over my body, looking to see if I'm wired. "Would you mind telling me what the hell is going on?" I ask.

She points to the table where there are several smashed listening devices. "Not here," she whispers.

I close my mouth. Suddenly, I understand why she looks afraid.

She goes over my briefcase and the shoe box with the wand. She sees that I'm missing some electronic devices, namely my laptop, and raises her eyebrow at me. It dawns on me that I'm no longer a schlep of an anonymous helper from London, but a potential suspect in her mind.

She believes in shape shifters and aliens and pretty much every script from every science fiction movie ever made and she just might snap at any time.

"It's okay," I say quietly. It's not quite the truth because this doesn't feel okay at all, but I'm not stupid. She has a gun; I don't.

She nods at the shoe box she's just run the wand over. "Change."

It's a single word that leaves no room for argument. I sit on the edge of the bed and slip my black leather boot off my left foot, and then my right. She keeps a hand on her gun while stuffing my boots into the duffle bag. I don't bother asking for better socks before dragging my new hiking boots on my feet. Her gaze bores into me while I do so, and when I'm bent over tying the second boot, she steps forward and pulls the collar of my shirt down low on my back.

I've had enough of this bullshit. "Seriously. What the fuck?"

Her eyes glance over mine, and then travel my body. "If I asked to prick your finger right now, would you try to kill me? Would you run?" she asks in a deadly calm whisper.

I think of several ways to fight her question, but they seem pointless. She's looking for something, what I'm not sure, but if we can get past her inquisition, maybe we can get on with things. Going back to London because I thought the Dana Scully was a paranoid loon would not earn me any merit badges with Clyde Easter.

I do the one thing I can do. I stick out my arm and offer it up to a blood test. She never lets go of her gun as she wraps a bathroom towel around her nose and mouth. She pulls from her back pocket a needle-prick device. "Think I have diabetes?" I ask with irritation.

She doesn't respond. She pricks my outstretched index finger and it barely bleeds, but it seems to be enough to satisfy her. She drops the towel from around her face. "Grab your bag," she orders, nodding her chin at the brown canvas laying next to my suitcase. She picks up a similar bag and ushers me through the door.

I watch as she uses the towel to wipe down the handle on both sides of the door, which seems odd to me since this hotel room is in in her name. Then it dawns on me that she's trying to protect me; that she's not sure that she can trust me, but if she can, she doesn't want anyone else to know I'm here. My fake ID might say a different name, but my fingerprints will come right back to Emily Prentiss.

Suddenly, my irritation fades and is replaced by a little fear. If I thought this case was strange, it's nothing compared to the paranoia seeping from the pores of one petite Dana Scully.

"Has your car been out of your sight?" she whispers as she closes the hotel door firmly.

"Yes, for a couple of hours," I whisper back. "But if you're worried that someone was able to get inside it, I don't think that's possible."

I think back to the parking area at the rec center, and of the teenagers outside playing basketball on bent hoops and broken backboards. How they stared at me as I got out of the car and I told them I was an old friend of Derek's. How they'd nodded and gotten back to their game. How they were still there in the waning minutes of dusk when I left, and how they whistled and laughed much to my embarrassment when Derek gave me a last hug goodbye with a whispered "Be safe" in my ear.

I shake myself from the memory. "I think if anyone suspicious got near my car, I would have been informed," I tell her.

"Think or know?" she asks.

"Know," I reply. "Unless you think the people who planted listening devices in your hotel room could have blended into Chicago's south side."

She raises an eyebrow and then nods. "Your car then."

When we're inside the car and I start the ignition, she asks, "What were you doing in that area of Chicago?"

"Visiting a friend," I say. Then tack on, "My old partner at the FBI. He's having a rough time right now."

"Did you tell him about the case?"

"Yes," I say honestly. "But don't worry. Derek Morgan would never betray my confidences. Ever. I left my laptop with him. I know you saw it was missing."

Scully lapses into silence and stares out at the darkness through the window. "I recognize his name, but I don't know him. Mulder and I weren't ones to socialize much outside of the basement," she murmurs.

I take the exit to the freeway that will lead us to the campground and keep my mouth shut for a good ten minutes before finally asking, "Would you mind telling me what the hell is going on? Were those listening devices in the room earlier today?"

She turns towards me. "If they were, there would have been no point in trying to make sure not a single print of yours was left in the room; I said your name a few times earlier today. When I returned to the hotel about an hour ago, I noticed that your suitcase had been moved slightly. At first I thought you'd come back, but then I noticed the lamp was in a different place on the nightstand, so I started looking. I checked into that room this morning and never left until you got there. Someone planted those devices after we left this afternoon. But they didn't look for prints. At least I didn't see any dust anywhere, and I looked carefully."

"So you're trying to protect me," I say.

"If you are who you say you are, and I believe you probably are, I certainly don't want you mixed up in this." She pauses and stares at me. "I think you should go home. It would be safer for you."

I glance at her. My instinct is to take her up on her offer, turn the car back towards O'Hare, and just forget the past twenty-four hours ever happened, but she's clearly on the verge of a breakdown. Though I thought my heart had been sufficiently walled off for months from such nuisances as empathy towards a stranger, that empathy is still there, and I can't leave her.

"Thanks for the warning, but I'm good. What did you learn from the witness earlier?"

Scully laughs quietly and mirthlessly. She reaches for her bag in the backseat and pulls out a folder. "What I learned is that who I saw for a brief moment before he took Mulder and who the first witness saw was one in the same. And he has an uncanny resemblance to one of my brothers and Fox Mulder. He looks a little too old, which is a mystery. But I think the young man was...is...my son. Our son, mine and Mulder's. Or at least someone wants me to believe that."

I glance at the sketch in her lap and then back at her face where tears are collecting in her eyes. I sit quietly, mulling over what she's just told me, and take the next exit, pulling into a parking space at a truck stop. Once the car is in park, I turn on the interior light and reach over and pick up the picture in her lap. "He could be anyone," I say softly. "How old would your son be now?"

"Fifteen, " she says quietly while wiping her eyes.

"I don't know too many fifteen years olds who could carry the dead weight of grown man and run with him like you described," I say.

She shakes her head at me. "If that was William, I don't think lifting anything would be too much for him."

I'm about to question that sentiment, but she continues before I get a chance.

"However, according to a newspaper article I found, our son and his adoptive parents died in a house fire back in 2009. I have no way of verifying anything."

She looks at the sketch in my hands and then looks up at me, her mind and heart staging a war that plays out in high definition in her eyes. She takes a deep breath and makes what I can see is a very difficult decision to trust me. "Do you? Do you have a way to look into that house fire without anyone knowing?"

I nod. I have two choices.

I could call Clyde, but for as much as he is a brilliant profiler and seems to procure fake IDs out of thin air, he's an absolute luddite when it comes to computers. The best he could do is a simple Google search on a good day. Which means he'd need to tap into Interpol resources, and that doesn't seem like the right move. If we're under surveillance and Scully is scared enough for me to wipe my prints from a hotel room, using Interpol in any way right now might be dangerous.

My other option has been trying to get in touch with me for months, and calling her wasn't on my agenda for this little trip back to the states, but she's the best and safest option.

I grab my burn phone from the console. "Be prepared for squeals of delight and some rapid fire personal questions directed at me," I say as dial Penelope Garcia's phone number from memory and set the phone on speaker, just so Scully can't question anything.

"Just let me do the talking," I warn right before Garcia answers.

XXXXX

* * *

 _When I was far enough away from the house that I could no longer hear my parents calling for me, I stopped. I wasn't even breathless. I was up on a slight hill, above the wheat, and I could see the peak of the roof of our house. I sat in the dirt and tried to stop my body from shaking. I couldn't figure out what was happening. I stayed crouched down and hidden for over an hour, digging my baseball cleats into the dirt. I felt normal out there with no voices._

 _The wind carried the sound of a car on our driveway, and I thought it must be my dad in the truck, coming to look for me. But the sound only lasted a moment before it stopped._

 _Confused, I stood and climbed higher on the hill, until I could see more of our house in the little pathway between the rows and rows of wheat below me. I couldn't see anything, really. I could see the windows on the second story, but that's about it._

 _Suddenly, in the gathering darkness, there was flash of orange, and a rush of flames that quickly consumed the part of the house I could see._

 _And then I was running, running back towards home. Shouting and crying, "Mom!" Dad!" "Mommy!"_

XXXX

* * *

It wasn't him. It wasn't him. It wasn't him.

I chanted that mantra in my mind the entire drive towards the campground. Penelope Garcia - once she'd gotten past the obvious shock of hearing from Prentiss out of the blue, and had asked a few questions about how Prentiss was doing that lead me to many insights about the woman beside me in the car, the very biggest being that she was definitely human and could probably be trusted more than anyone else I had in my life at that moment - had been fast in her research. She bought Prentiss's story hook, line and sinker, about how she was investigating arson cases with an unsub she thought might have originated in the United States before coming to London. Prentiss had one fire in particular she was interested in but didn't want anyone to know she was searching because she felt like there might be a cover-up involved.

What Penelope found was what I had both hoped and feared. Apparently someone commented in the newspaper about William Van de Camp freaking out at a baseball game earlier in the day of the fire.

"It seems way off, Emily. They were found in their beds." Penelope said on the phone. "Your kid freaks out and starts screaming at a baseball game. You whisk him away and drive an hour home. And you go straight to bed and then sleep through an electrical fire that starts about an hour later and burns you to a crisp in your beds? Not likely. No autopsies. And here's the kicker. The bodies didn't end up in the county morgue at all. I'm looking at the paperwork here and someone from Fort McCoy in Wisconsin took possession of the bodies."

"What?" Prentiss whispered on the phone.

She might have been confused, but I wasn't. The Van de Kamps might have been burned to death, but the charred body of the boy found in his bedroom was not my son. The fact that the military was involved scared me to my core about what could have potentially happened to William, but he was alive. I believe that.

Prentiss was quiet on the drive to the campground and she's quiet now as we walk up the path with our bags and a flashlight towards where Mulder and I had set up a tent a few nights ago. She's watching me, though, gazing as my many emotions roll and crest over me, like she understands that I have to work through them in my head before I'm willing to talk more.

We're not actually in the campground proper, but up in a grove of trees where camping is not usually permitted. There is crime scene tape around the area and in terms of the campground, the grove is temporarily closed pending our investigation.

I relieve the two local police officers who have been guarding the area throughout the day. I know this detail of local police help is going to end soon, with no other people having gone missing in several days as far as they know.

They look curiously at Prentiss. "FBI resources from the Chicago field office," I say. "Mulder had a family emergency."

They accept that and make their way down the path, saying they'll be in touch in the morning, but not sure if another day of staking out the area will be assigned.

Prentiss's silence is broken when she asks, "Why are we staying here?"

I shake my head and unzip the tent. Though I have no reason to believe the police officers are anything other than what they are, I reach for the two lanterns in the tent and turn them on. Everything looks exactly as I left it very early this morning. Exactly. No one has disturbed anything in here.

"It's getting cold at night now. When the other people were returned, it was night and they were out of it for awhile, but it was warmer. I'm afraid if Mulder is returned during the night, he might suffer from exposure before he can get himself out of the woods or anyone finds him."

I close my eyes and remember me when I was pregnant, coming upon Mulder's body in woods not that different from these, and he was already seemingly dead. That was the last time he was taken and returned to me, and I can't help reliving those nightmares now.

"Being away from here today was difficult for you," Prentiss says as she steps into the tent and surveys the two sleeping bags that have been zipped together.

Instinctively, I want to tell her it's not what it looks like. Not that it matters. The years Mulder and I spent pretending that we were nothing more than partners and friends seem like another lifetime ago. FBI rumors became reality for most people as soon as my pregnancy became evident, and were completely obliterated when I helped Mulder escape a military prison and ran away with him.

Still, what Prentiss doesn't know is that two nights ago was the first time I'd slept with the comfort and warmth of Mulder's arms around me in several years. Tears fill my eyes and I turn to look at her. I don't cry in front of people. I just don't. Yet here I am, crying in front of a perfect stranger.

Her eyes are soft and sympathetic in the glow of the camping lanterns. "I need you to tell me what you think is going on so I can help you."

I sink to the sleeping bag and she puts down her duffle bag and sits beside me. The tent flap is open and I look out into the dark night. The tears are hot on my face, and I could sob right now, but I hold myself in check, letting the tears fall without accompanying them with gasps or shaky breaths. I'm don't quite know where to begin, but Prentiss is sticking with me, and I need someone to talk to. I'm not good at this. Pre-FBI, I confided in my mother only on very rare occasions. And then one day I landed in the basement office with a man that rocked the very foundation of who I thought I was as a person, and he's been my only confidant for over two decades.

"I'm not sure what's going on. All I know is that I made the decision in 2001, when Mulder was in hiding, to give our son, William, up for adoption. I thought it would be safer for him, that he might get to have a normal life. But William wasn't normal in the typical sense of the word. I thought the things that made him different were cured, for lack of a better term, but I was wrong. I think William can move inanimate objects, I saw him do it as an infant, and I think over time, he regained that ability. I think he's probably very physically strong, and I think maybe he has more powers than I can reasonably guess at. I don't think he died in that house fire. I think he was taken by the military, by enemies Mulder and I are very aware of, but I'm not sure why they waited so long. They probably always knew where he was. I'm not sure what part about William losing it at a baseball game triggered them to stage a fire and take William away, but I think that's exactly what happened."

Prentiss clears her throat. "Powers," she mumbles.

"You think I'm crazy, but you haven't heard the half of it," I respond while I wipe my eyes on my shirt sleeve.

"I'm listening," she says neutrally and calmly.

I am physically and emotionally exhausted and flop back on a pillow. I can't face her eyes, so I close mine. And I open my mouth and tell her everything in condensed, clipped sentences. I tell her about the things I've seen that made me question my beliefs. I tell her about being abducted, about learning about the chip in my neck, about removing it and being diagnosed with cancer. About how Mulder procured another chip that I had implanted again and my cancer immediately went into remission.

I tell her about government conspiracies, my missing ova, a nemesis named Spender, and my glimpses of things that could be nothing other than alien.

I tell her about Mulder being infected with an alien virus once, and then several years later he was abducted once again. I tell her about the bee sting that infected me, and how someone gave Mulder the cure and he literally travelled to the ends of the earth to get to me and cure me.

I tell her about my DNA, which when you dig deep enough has some components that are decidedly not human, and how I suspect Mulder has the same phenomenon coursing through his blood.

All of this is said in a quiet, detached air, and she remains silent, even her breathing is almost silent.

When I get to the absolute kicker in this whole messed up story that is my life, the tears start up again. "Mulder came across some of my ova on a case and took a vial. He didn't tell me about that at first, and when he did tell me it was the worst possible time." I pause. I just can't tell her about a daughter named Emily that I only knew for scant days, so I skip it. "It took me a long time to get over that, and I contemplated leaving him and the X-Files a few times, but I just couldn't. For as much as his choices have driven me to the brink of insanity on several occasions, he would never deliberately hurt me. And when I was done being angry, I asked him to help me, to father a child with me, using the ova he'd procured."

I stop talking and brush my eyes again. I turn my head to the side and inhale into a pillow that still smells faintly of Mulder's shampoo.

"And you had William," Emily says.

I shake my head. "No. The in vitro procedures didn't work. Mulder and I had been through so much by that point, and I think my inability to get pregnant hurt him almost more than it hurt me. And at that momentt, we both just gave up on the pretense that we were only FBI partners and best friends."

I still remember that night in stunning detail when I think about it. How our tears had blended together and then turned to kisses. How his lips felt, how relieved we both were to have finally, finally gotten to that point, how neither of us wanted to voice the fact that the final act of acknowledging the extent of our feelings for each other came at the hands of such devastating news.

My voice is raw when I start speaking again, "Several months later, I was lured into going with Spender with the promise of answers. I think he did something to me during that time. All I know is that I woke up in a bed, in pajamas I didn't own, with no recollection of the evening before. And a few months after that, Mulder was abducted and I found out I was pregnant."

Prentiss is silent enough that I blink my eyes open to look at her, half expecting to find that she'd left the tent and was halfway back to London by now. But she's right there, staring at me.

"Jesus," she breathes.

"Ready to go back to London now?" I ask.

"Hell no," she responds immediately. "I know monsters, Dana," she says seriously, using my first name for the first time. "You just have a different brand of monster you've dealt with. I'm all in."

I don't know why I'm surprised. And I'm not used to feeling grateful, or feeling like I've made a new friend. She doesn't quite believe the extent of everything she's heard, but she believes that I believe it - I can see that in her eyes.

She reaches for my arm and pats my shoulder. "Tomorrow, when it's light out, I'll look at the area where you saw Mulder disappear to see if I notice anything different. And then I think you should hang tight while I go to Fort McCoy and poke around."

I sit up and shake my head. "You can't do that. You don't want to be mixed up in this to that level."

"Emily Prentiss won't be," she says firmly. "Clyde can get me what I need - fake ID, clearances, fake job. He can make sure my fingerprints come back to a fake ID if we need him to. It will be fine and we _will_ solve this."

Why I so desperately want to believe someone I hardly know is beyond me, but I do. I just want someone to fix it; I'm too damn tired to do it myself right now.

"Do you think it was really William that took Mulder?" she asks.

"I don't know," I answer softly. "I only know that I felt like I was completely paralyzed but I managed to squeeze out a word - _please_ \- that took all of my effort. And that's when the face of the man holding Mulder changed to look like what could be William. And he told me he was sorry, like he didn't want to take Mulder from me at all. I don't understand it."

"We'll figure it out," Prentiss says firmly. "One of us should stay awake. Why don't you sleep first for a few hours, and then we can trade?"

I'm exhausted having slept not at all last night, but she must be, too. "It's the middle of the night in London. Why don't I take the first shift?" I offer.

She shakes her head. "I'm good. I slept on the plane and had coffee with Derek earlier. I'm wide awake."

I stare at her for a few seconds before bending forward and unzipping my duffle bag. I reach in and hand her Mulder's gun. Either I can trust her and get a few hours of sleep, or she's going to kill me and this misery will all be over. Both seem like acceptable options to me.

Only after she takes the gun and I scoot myself inside the sleeping bag, I realize that finding sleep might not be as easy as I'd hoped. My head is spinning, and one thing Garcia said on the phone swirls to the forefront of my mind.

"I'm sorry about your mother passing away. Mine died recently as well."

I watch Prentiss shrug as she stares out into the night. "Thank you."

"You've cut yourself off from everyone because you don't want to talk about it?" I venture.

She turns to look at me. "Look, I appreciate you being so candid with me because it was necessary for me to understand what I was getting into with this case. But I don't do this. We aren't girls at some sleepaway camp sharing all of our secrets. I don't talk about things like this with anyone. It's just not me."

I falter at the harshness of her words, but nod, turning on my side away from her and burying my nose in Mulder's pillow.

I hear Prentiss sigh. "I'm sorry," she whispers. "My mother and I had unresolved issues that I felt I had time to work on and then time was up abruptly. I haven't wanted to speak with anyone since she died because I've felt out of control…"

She trails off like she was going to say more but stopped herself. I can sort of piece it together. Her mother died. She took her lack of control into the job. She's been making poor choices. Those poor choices landed her in Chicago with me, a woman I'm sure she thinks is crazy on some level. Or all levels.

"But you went to see Derek," I say, just trying to learn this woman a bit better since I'm literally putting my life in her hands once I fall asleep.

"Derek's different. And he's a mess, too, for entirely different reasons. We don't have to talk much to comfort each other," she says softly.

I smile sadly into the pillow. "You two sound like me and Mulder."

"No," Prentiss breathes. "He's a good friend, but that's it."

I can tell by her voice that that's not entirely it and risk words that might get me beat up by a woman who easily could take me. I have no doubt about that. I risk words that I've never uttered to anyone while I try to read her. "It's like Goldilocks. At least that's how I always felt. Searching for that _just right_. And then one day you find it and it all just fits. Or maybe it was always there but you couldn't admit it. I think maybe that was it. Even though I lost it, even though Mulder and I both did. For a while there, everything was just right and it was amazing. I wouldn't trade it for anything. Even though this is where I ended up."

Nothing but silence is the response, but I hear slightly altered breathing. I open my eyes and see Prentiss slightly illuminated, sitting on the edge of the air mattress, her knees drawn up in front of her, gun in one hand, as she stares out of the tent. Her face shows no emotion.

I wait for several minutes and she doesn't speak. My eyes feel heavy and I'm losing my battle to stay awake. Just when I feel myself slipping off into slumber, I hear whispered words. "But then the bears come home. You might think you've found something just right, but then the bears are there, and you have to run away. That's how the story goes."

I'm about to argue with her, but she's right. Her bears are definitely far different than aliens and a dark government conspiracies.

But the bears always come home.

XXXX

* * *

For at least the thousandth time in the ten hours since Emily left the rec center, I second guessed myself.

I'm not sure why it felt right to head back into the rec center after I watched Emily's car pull away and go straight upstairs and towards my razor, but I did. I'm not sure what compelled me to prop a mirror up on the ledge of the sink and shave my head and facial hair until I resembled the Derek Morgan she once knew so well, but I did.

When that was done, I tried to talk myself out of following her. She'd surely be pissed. Hell hath no fury like Emily Prentiss feeling like someone is trying to protect her.

I threw myself onto the futon, and tried to force myself into sleep, but I all could think about was Emily with her arms around me, comforting me without making me feel like she pitied me, which was something I so desperately needed.

And she was out there at some campground, probably willing to throw herself into unimaginable situations because she was on the edge once again, and I couldn't live with it. I couldn't live with the idea of not trying to protect her from herself when she got to a point like this. I've only seen it a couple of times in the past, but each time was more than I could bear, and one time I thought I'd lost her completely.

I tossed and turned on my futon for hours, thinking about her. It was strange how a woman I'd hardly allowed myself to think about for a few years came at me full force in my mind after seeing her again for a couple of hours.

At around three o'clock in the morning, I gave up on sleep. I got up and started hanging sheetrock.

Thirty minutes later, that wasn't doing anything for me. So I showered in the locker room downstairs and came to a decision: I'd head up to the campground and take my chances with what would likely be a very pissed off Emily.

I emailed my mother letting her know that I'd decided to take a few days away from Chicago to gather my thoughts.

I pulled the large lock box out from under the futon and pulled out my personal gun. I put Emily's laptop and passport into that box.

With my comfortable jeans, a shaven face and head, and a gun in my hand, I felt more like myself than I'd ever hoped to feel again.

The drive to the campground took only an hour with absolutely no traffic, and now I'm sitting here in a parking lot just before dawn, looking up the hillside where I know Emily is with Dana Scully in a tent.

 _I was bored._ Maybe that would work as an explanation as to why I'm here. She'd read right through that.

I look at the bag on my passenger seat. _I brought you bagels, Emily. Nice to meet you, Scully._

No, Emily would see through that lame ply, too.

Maybe I should just tell her I was worried about her straight up and face the wrath. It's bound to yield better results in the long run than trying to obfuscate with bullshit.

Or maybe I should just turn around and go home and start hanging more sheetrock.

I tap my fingers on the steering wheel and contemplate those two options, the idea of going back to the rec center winning out, when my thoughts are distracted by a large SUV pulling into the parking lot.

Odd. It's 5:30 in the morning.

I watch four men in fatigues emerge from the vehicle, and they are packing heat that my handgun is no match for. My heart starts thrumming as I crouch down in my seat while keeping my eyes on them. This is way wrong.

They gather and look at a map. I watch as one points towards the path that leads to the grove where I know Emily and Scully are camping.

What they don't know or realize is that the path is circuitous, winding this way and that before arriving. Summers where my sisters and I and our cousins played hide and seek in these woods give me the knowledge I need to know the fastest path to Emily is straight up the hill in front of me. And if I'm fast enough, I'll bypass meeting the soldiers as I cross the trail.

It's been over six months since I've run at full tilt in pursuit, but my adrenaline is pumping and I know there is no other choice.

As soon as the soldiers round a curve out of sight, I get out of my car with my gun in hand. My legs pump like I never lost the Derek Morgan I once knew, up the hill and towards where Emily said they were camping, not in pursuit of the soldiers, but to get to Emily and Scully and get them out of there before men with machine guns who have no business in these woods at the crack of dawn get to them.

I run.

XXXX

* * *

 _Just as I was getting close enough to home that I could feel the heat of the flames, an arm in black reached out and snatched me, nearly knocking the wind out of me. The sharp pain of a needle in my arm. Then nothing._

 _I think about that night almost daily. Fire reminds me. And the burned, charred remnants of an area that was once lush with trees reminds me._

 _But I'm thinking about it more keenly now than ever before. I'm thinking about it because years after losing my father to a fire, I have been able to touch the man who is my biological father. And soon, I'll be able to touch my biological mother._

 _I know this isn't really me, not really. And I know the Dana I've known for the past ten years is not really my mom. Both of us exist in this future, but our true selves are on the other side._

 _With Mulder's eyes - my father's eyes - on the back of figure, I head towards the shimmering light. I'm going back to get my mother and bring her here. My biological mother. She's right there on the other side, and my father has decided that this is best. That she must come with us on this quest to alter the future._

 _I know her so well without ever having known her._

 _I can't wait to hug her._

 _I can't wait to say the word, "Mom" again._


	5. Chapter 5

_I walked into Derek's office fighting the effects of the vicodin I'd taken an hour before, my arm in a sling from a gunshot graze, and guilt swirling inside me._

" _Hotch tells me that you're my ride home," I said._

 _Derek looked up from his desk, his eyes both compassionate and concerned. "I volunteered."_

 _I nodded and stepped towards his desk. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have joked about Doyle. It was an asshole move. You just won't talk about it. You won't talk about what that whole thing was like for you, thinking I was dead. You keep making jokes about me playing dead, so I did, too. I shouldn't have. I know it's weird, but I think I'd be much happier if you'd just be angry with me."_

 _He laughed lightly and stood from his desk, moving around the edge to stand in front of me. "Do you remember the case in New York with the ambulance and the bomb?"_

 _At my slight nod, he continued, "There was talk of making me head of the New York field office, but Hotch wouldn't recommend me because he said I didn't really trust people."_

 _I raised my eyebrow and smiled slightly in understanding, then looked down as I felt him step closer. My eyes were heavy, but I felt like this was a conversation that was several months overdue, so I fought against my fatigue._

" _So," he said. "I think that was pretty accurate then. I don't think it's as accurate now. I think I've learned the hard way what can happen when we don't trust each other. We both have. I'm not angry. What if I understand, even though it was probably one of the most difficult times in my life?"_

 _I shrugged with my one good shoulder. "Then I don't know. You tried to get me to talk about what was going on before I went after Doyle, and I wouldn't. If the situation was reversed, I'd be pissed."_

 _I couldn't meet his eyes, so I stared at his shoes, right in front of mine. I was aware of every breath he took, just inches from me._

" _I would have gone after him with you, you know," he said softly._

 _Eyes still averted, I nodded slightly, "I know. But I...I didn't want you to know that Emily."_

" _Well," he whispered, "That's the most honest thing you've ever told me. And I think I'd like to get to know all of your Emilys."_

 _My heart thudded hard in my chest, and it seemed to have a direct line to my eyes, which jolted to look up and meet his. Yes, his anger would have been far more comfortable to me than what I saw in his face just then._

 _His hand reached out and touched my forehead before sliding down to push my hair behind my ear and I was immediately on high alert. I couldn't have anyone who knew me so well, who understood me at my worst, touching me like that; with intimate familiarity and care when I'd asked for nor wanted neither._

 _Still, I was stunned by the move. Stunned immobile. It wasn't until Derek was bowing his head and leaning towards me, when his top lip ghosted over mine with the barest touch, that I snapped out of it. With more force than I intended, my good arm shot out and pushed him hard against his chest. He stumbled back, and I said the only thing I could think of in the moment._

" _I would destroy you, Derek. And_ that's _the most honest thing I could ever tell you about myself."_

 _I watched the look on his face for only a second before I ran. Out his office door, down the hall, down the stairs and out of the bullpen, adrenaline overpowering the pain meds in my system. I knew I shouldn't be driving, but I went to my car in the garage anyway._

 _I was aware of headlights behind mine minutes after I'd pulled onto the road, and they stayed on my tail until I pulled up in front of my building. I didn't know what I would do if he got out of the car and demanded to talk. I didn't have even a single word I could think of to say to him. I couldn't get the look of his face after I pushed him off my mind - how desire and hope dissolved in an instant into disappointment and sadness and regret._

 _He didn't stop, though. His car slowed slightly as I got out of my vehicle, but then he kept driving, merely making sure I got home safely._

 _Anything I ever could have thought of to say of him never was given opportunity. I stayed home for the remainder of the week and when I returned to work, it was business as usual._

 _We never talked of that night again._

* * *

By the time two o'clock in the morning rolled around, when it was nearly time for Scully and I to trade, for me to get a few hours of sleep while she stood watch, I was emotionally strung out.

I spent the first couple of hours while she was sleeping staring out into the dark night and mulling over her and Mulder's story. At first, I couldn't imagine how they'd hung in there so long given all that had been thrown out of them. I bypassed thinking about aliens, green blood and government conspiracies and simply focused on all they had lost. But something that Scully had said rattled me, and when I looked at things from a completely objective standpoint that left no room for the paranormal, I came to a different conclusion than she'd deduced.

I turned to tell her what I thought, but she was sound asleep, and I decided to let her rest.

My mind then went in an entirely different and unwelcome direction, pondering myself and relationships and what the hell was wrong with me. I am a strong woman, but I am not a bitch. Yet, I nearly bit Scully's head off when she tried to have any sort of personal conversation with me. And it wasn't about my mother dying that set me on edge; it was about what that conversation represented.

I'd always seen myself as someone far different from Elizabeth Prentiss, but the fact is, I really don't think I am. The only difference between the two of us is that at the age of forty-six, I do not have a sixteen year old daughter and a husband to rip apart with coldness, fear of true intimacy on any level, and indifference.

As unpleasant the thought was, that conversation was more welcome in my mind then what came next.

Were Morgan and I just friends? That was a proverbial thorn in my side. I'd said it to Scully, because I needed to believe it, but the fact is that my feelings about Derek Morgan were a muddled mess. If someone put a gun to my head and told me to pick the person I trusted most in the world, I would say Morgan without a second thought. Still, absolute trust does not equate more than friendship.

An almost kiss in his office when my arm was in a sling after being shot and pushing him away with my good hand...that's as close as we came to anything more than friends.

While Derek might know me better than anyone, the fact remains that any relationship I ever had followed a carefully prescribed path - superficial fun, carefully controlled feelings and conversations, jagged edges of anxiety when I felt someone getting too close, and then an uncharacteristically passive and surefire icing out until whomever I was with eventually gave up.

My emotions are a prison, and the closest I ever let anyone get was a conjugal visit with metaphorical guards on high alert right there. So the idea of a relationship with someone who had already caught glimpses of who I was behind the iron bars of my heart was not something I could even contemplate.

I wasn't kidding; I had no doubt I would destroy Derek Morgan, and I would never let myself.

Still, one thing he said to me that night never quite settled with me. If I had to draw a personified picture of honesty, I'd draw Derek Morgan, hands down. And yet, I never could comprehend that him thinking I was dead was one of the worst experiences of his life when his life had been filled with experiences far worse than anything my melancholy could muster up for myself.

Did that qualify as me having more than just friendly feelings for Derek? Probably not. But the fact that the reel of that one night in his office played in my mind like a movie for over five years probably did. The fact that in my loneliest moments, I always found myself drawing on that memory and wondering how my life might possibly be different - how I might have learned to be different - if I'd just let go of all my carefully maintained control and kissed him back.

With that depressing and uncomfortable thought, I stand in the tent and make my way outside to stretch my limbs. I look up at the stars in the sky through the thick cover of trees and wonder yet again what the hell I'm even doing here.

Telling Clyde to fire me would have been easier; that I was done with the job, with the fight, with guns and unsubs, and profiling and politics, would have been much easier. And much more honest. Except for the one thing that filled me with dread - the idea of what came next. I had no clue who I was without my job, and no direction.

On some level Clyde probably knows. He knows I need out of the game, but he sent me here. I can't figure it out. He had to have some basic knowledge of the type of cases Mulder and Scully worked on. Was he trying to drive me to absolutely insanity having to try to absorb all of this completely unbelievable crap and work it? Or did he simply know that Dana Scully was a generally kind person who might draw me out of my shell.

 _And what kind of fucking cosmic coincidence was it that Derek Morgan was here?_

That thought gives me pause for the first time. I didn't know Derek was here until my plane was in the air and I started finally reading the emails I'd long ignored, but Penelope had given up on my personal email and started using my Interpol address months ago.

"Fucking Clyde," I mutter quietly in the wind. Clyde, who never really saw me being close to anyone before, who commented and marveled about how close Derek and I seemed once he'd met Derek, and again after Derek and Penelope visited London. Who maddeningly only referred to Mark as "Morgan Two" for months.

I would not put it past him to have an analyst give him copies of my work emails when I started down the path I'm currently on; it's in his purview to read the work emails for any agent under him.

In that context, if it's true, Clyde sending me here to help Scully without really pondering it with me much at all makes more sense. I bristle in anger at the thought and if I had any cell phone reception right now, I'd be calling Clyde and drilling him with questions, but I don't have reception.

And I can't really be mad, because the two hours I spent with Morgan were the most human and whole I'd felt in six months.

I sigh and stare at the stars. Through the trees, I can make out some constellations as my breath makes little white puffs in front of me. Scully was right about the temperature dropping significantly at night lately. The jacket I retrieved from the duffle bag and my hands in my pockets keep me warm, but my face feels the change in the air; summer was leaving the area and fall is imminent.

The squeak of the air mattress from inside the tent tells me that Scully is moving, and I turn back towards her to let her know it's time to trade. She is eerily awake and upright, sitting on the edge of the mattress when I step back into the tent, like she has some precise internal clock and knows it's her shift.

I only nod at her as I lay myself down on the air mattress. I think about sleeping on top of the sleeping bag, but I'm cold enough to want a little warmth. I don't bother taking my boots off, though. I only have a few hours until dawn and the act of removing my shoes feels like too much of an effort.

"I think you're wrong," I tell her as I settle against a pillow and try not to think about what Scully and Mulder might have been up to in this sleeping bag a few nights ago.

She turns towards me. "About what?"

"You said you thought they always wanted you and Mulder dead. But dead is easy. I think there are probably people who have wanted you dead throughout the years, but the fact is someone, or some group of someones, _needs_ you alive for some reason. They may not care if you're broken or hurt or unable to function, but you breathing is essential for some reason. Otherwise they could have and would have just ended it long ago."

She opens her mouth to speak, but I don't have a long conversation in me. I turn my head and let my heavy eyelids close.

My dreams are of a pregnant Scully burying Mulder and then digging up his barely alive body three months later. Only when it comes to opening the coffin, it's noy Fox Mulder I see there, but myself. In my dream, my heart starts pounding so hard it's deafening in my ears.

I'm not sure if it's minutes or hours later, but I startle awake.

At first I don't know where I am, and my heart is still pounding so loud I can barely hear over it. My senses come back to me quickly, one by one. I see the blue vinyl of the tent and I'm reminded where I am. I also can tell by the fact that darkness has given away to murky light that it's about dawn.

And it's not my heart pounding in my ears that I hear, but the thumping of something on the ground.

"What's that?" Scully hisses, and I'm out of the sleeping bag and standing with gun in hand in an instant.

Feet running right towards us, that's what I'm hearing.

Scully moves out of the tent with her gun drawn and I'm right behind her. I mentally kick myself for shivering at the thought of aliens and alien hybrids and everything else Scully had told me the night before. But before I have too much of a chance to reprimand myself into reality, I realize that the running feet we hear is decidedly human when Derek Morgan comes over the ridge below us, out of breath.

Scully raises her gun and I move between her weapon and Derek.

"Morgan, what the hell?" I ask.

He's out of breath like he's been running like crazy, and I know Derek well enough to know that if he's out of breath like this, it wasn't a simple jog in the woods for him.

"Soldiers," he gasps out. "On the trail. Maybe five or ten minutes behind me. We have to go!"

I raise my eyebrows and Scully hisses behind me, "Penelope?"

I shake my head and look at her. "There's no way her search would have been picked up, and besides, we didn't tell her where we were. She thought I was still in London."

Derek reaches for my hand in that moment and tugs me towards him, like conversation is pointless now. "They have machine guns. We have to go. Now!"

I turn to look at Scully, who is rubbing the back of her neck and looking scared. I reach for her to pull her with us. To get her moving. If Derek says we have to go, we have to go.

The faint sound of lightning distracts us all, and I look up and peer at the clear sky. The unmistakable feeling of static in the air renders us all motionless. I literally feel my hair lift up off the back of my neck.

Just then, I catch a glimpse of movement on the hill above us, and Scully must sense it. The path where the soldiers would come from is to our right, so I don't know who it could be. And then I see him in the rising sun, a man in denim and a plaid shirt. A man that looks every bit like the man I was sent here to help find.

"Mulder," Scully whispers, and moves to run towards him.

I reach out my hand and grab Scully's jacket, holding her back firmly even though she's fighting me with everything in her. "No! The kidnapper always looked like the last one taken," I hiss.

But she's having none of it. "Mulder!" she cries a little louder and tries to shake my hand from her grasp.

"Derek, help me," I say, and then he is there, holding onto Scully's other arm.

"Emily!" he grits out quietly. "We have to go right now!"

I nod, but we're all staring at the sight of Mulder coming down the hill, the light that I thought was the sunrise reflecting behind him staying with him, right there over his shoulder, shining brightly like an orb.

We all, even the man who looks like Mulder, turn to look at the path when we hear footsteps approaching.

I watch, but I can't believe it. It all happens in an instant but feels like slow motion. Four soldiers in full tactical gear with machine guns raised appear, and I glance at Mulder and see him melt away to a man who looks the sketch I held in my hand the evening before, brown hair being replaced by auburn. His eyes narrow and the bright light behind him moves, stretching, shimmering like a bubble and moving into a dome over us.

"Freeze," one of the soldiers calls out.

And even though we do, it doesn't matter.

Because that light does form a dome that shimmers only slightly in the faint light, but it's there, providing a seal between us and the soldiers.

I watch in shock as they start firing guns, and their bullets only make muffled noises against the dome, but they don't penetrate.

Scully sags, and me and Derek keep her upright.

"Are you seeing this," I hiss at him.

"Yes," Morgan whispers back.

The man is running towards us. "I won't hurt you," he says as he grabs Scully from us and towards him.

"William," she whispers.

I have no idea what the hell is going on. I can't be seeing any of this; it's not real. The young man in front of me, and four men with machine guns trying to get through a seal that is nearly translucent, but their bullets and bodies are bouncing right off it as they try to bust through.

"What the hell is this?" Derek asks, finding words where my vocal cords seem to have failed me.

"We don't have time!" the young man grits. "This will weaken me and I won't be able to get out of here! Your medical bag, Scully," he says.

My eyes flick away from the scene around me and back towards the tent, where I know there are medical supplies in her duffle bag that Scully explained the night before she never went anywhere with Mulder without.

I glance back at Scully who is staring into the face of the young man holding her, more mute than me, frozen in shock or hope or fear, I'm not sure. And then suddenly she is screaming and pounding her fist against the man, "Where's Mulder!" she shouts.

"Shit," the young man murmurs. And then Scully freezes and droops in his arms, and he's lowering her to the ground. Her eyes are open, staring, but she doesn't seem able to move.

"What did you do to her?" Derek hisses, sinking on his knees to the ground to feel for Scully's pulse. And I'm thinking that is supposed to be my job - to watch Scully's back, but I can't move. This is a dream, it has to be. I'm really back in the tent, or back in London, and any minute now I'm going to wake up.

"She's fine," the man says. "We just don't have time for outbursts. I'll explain it all later."

I'm startled out of my numb state by a warm hand on my cheek, and then I finally am able to move, to jump back, when I realize it's the young man touching me.

"We have to go, Emily," he whispers.

"How did you know…"

He holds up his hand. "The most reliable polygraph test you'll ever find. You are Emily Prentiss. You are a good person. He's Derek Morgan. He's your friend, and you trust him. That's all I care about."

I raise my gun at him, and it flies out of my hands and into his. Derek stands from where he's crouched next to Scully and raises his gun, and the man smile slightly at us. I stare in shock as Derek's gun flies out of his hand.

"You could both unload your clips in me and it wouldn't make a difference, except that my shield would disappear for a few minutes while I recovered and then you'd have to deal with them," he says while nodding his chin at the soldiers as he hands us back our guns. "You have to make a choice. Come with me, or test your fate with them. I can probably give you a thirty-second head start."

I'm seriously considering telling Derek to grab Scully and taking the head start when Derek is beside me, grabbing my arm. "Snap out of it, Emily. I have no idea what's going on, but those soldiers don't look like they're here to just ask us some questions. We'd never make it."

 _You really won't make it. Neither will he. They don't care about you; you'll be dead long before you get to the parking lot. Come with me. I won't hurt you._ The voice is strong in my head, but I shake myself, not believing what I'm hearing.

"Go where?" I ask the man.

"To my side," he says. "I don't have time for more explanations than that."

I nod, and everything speeds up again. The man goes into the tent and grabs both my duffle bag and Scully's. "Anything else you need in here?" he asks.

I shake my head.

He hands me one of the bags and slings the other over his shoulder, then bends to lift Scully like she weighs absolutely nothing.

"Hold onto me and don't let go," the young man says to Derek. "And then grab Emily and make sure you don't let go of her. I've never taken this many people through before. Just don't let go, no matter what happens."

I hear his words, but my eyes are riveted on the soldiers that I can see through the shield that's protecting us. They seem to be unloading the entirety of their arsenal trying to get through.

"This is going to happen fast," the man says.

I feel Derek take my hand, and then he must change his mind, because he slings his arm around my waist and hauls my body against his, the duffle bag knocking against our hips and his gun pressing into my lower back.

"Don't let go of me, Emily," he says. I glance at his other arm that's slung around the man's neck. Derek looks scared. I don't think I've ever seen him look this scared. I place my arms around his neck.

It's seconds and an eternity. It's unreal.

I hear the young man - William? - grunt slightly and then our tent goes up in flames. I see the shield start to lift slowly and as soon as it gets to knee level on the soldiers, it starts lifting faster. The tent is engulfed in flames and then it is in the air. The dome lifts, letting the soldiers in, but before they can shoot or make a step forward, our fireball of a tent is flying at them. I see them consumed by flames just for an instant, and then there is nothing but bright light and weightlessness.

I feel like I'm going to be sick, like my stomach isn't even part of my body anymore, and then the images come and I don't know what I'm looking at at first, not at all, but they're right there in my head, like I'm seeing them in real life. A little toddler laughing and being chased. I little boy with a smile I know chasing his sisters in the woods, and then that same boy a few years later watching his father die. Horrible teenage years. Running on a football field. Him in a police uniform. Him joining the FBI academy. JJ and Hotch and Reid and Gideon. And then I'm there, seeing myself through his eyes. Us laughing. The team. On the plane. Him sobbing over my body as I laid on a warehouse floor. That night in his office. More faces of other agents after I was gone. And then another woman, and finally a baby, and then me again, in the rec center with him, hugging him.

I have a vague recognition that these are Derek's memories, not all of them, but many of them. And they are coming at me so fast that I can barely catch a glimpse before the next one comes. I clutch him tighter, but I can't see him. I can't see him or the young man or Scully.

I'm flying and there are sharp sounds here, like glass breaking, and my stomach contents give up their fight and I throw up all over Derek.

The bright light starts fading and the sounds of glass breaking fade. I feel my body hit something solid, and there's pain as my body collides with the ground.

I can't open my eyes, or are my eyes open and I can't see?

Am I dead? Am I blind?

A voice. "Scully! What the hell happened, William?"

Another voice. "Soldiers. Ambushed. Hurry. Get her in the box. Then we have to get them underground, too."

A moan, and a body against mine. The strong smell of vomit and familiar cologne. Fingertips that feel gentle on the pulse at my neck. His body covering mine. "Emily," Derek sighs.

The heavy, comforting weight of him against me.

And then nothing but blackness.

* * *

I've never been this weak. The light that is always with me is now a faint gray shadow, no larger than my hand. Fainter than even when I was a young boy and I didn't know what it was. I have no idea how long it's going to take to regain my strength. I've never taken that many people through before; I've never touched so many people all at once, absorbing all of their memories.

After Mulder got Scully underground, he came back, and together we carried Emily and Derek down the stairs and laid them as gently as we could on a mattress in one of the alcoves here. They'll probably have some bruises; it took everything in me to help get them down the stairs, and my shaking hands slipped several times.

Mulder didn't ask me what had happened. As soon as Emily and Derek were underground and the door was closed again, he grabbed the medical bag from one of the duffle bags and went back to his Scully.

What I do know is that we have two extra really good people here with us that I never counted on. And I know that if any of those soldiers were hybrids, the fire that engulfed them did not kill them. Which means we have to work really quickly, or the whole point of all of this will be lost.

I hear the faint sounds of arguing from down the hall.

" _Let me do it," Dana says. "Your hands are shaking too much."_

" _He's really weak," Mulder says._

" _Let me do it," Dana says again. "We'll knock her out long enough so that he can regain his strength and she won't have to wake up in here with me."_

" _Scully. Scully, Honey. I know you can't hear me, but it's going to be okay. We just need you to sleep for awhile."_

I slump on the ground near the goat pen and stare across the way at the forms of Emily and Derek as they lay unconscious on the mattress, wondering what they are going to make of all of this when they wake up.

I hear footsteps and Mulder is there in front of me. His hand lands on my shoulder. "Who are they?"

"Ex-FBI. She was sent here to help Scully find you. I couldn't get much. There wasn't time. They're the good guys."

Mulder smiles slightly at that, and my eyes droop heavily. I know he wants to ask me what exactly happened, but I need to rest. When Emily and Derek wake up, we're going to have to convince them to help us. And then Scully will wake up and that will be worse, explaining all of this.

I'm so tired. I've never been tired like this.

I look up briefly at Mulder. I know he's my father, but I'm not entirely William. I have Dana, who isn't really my mother. And I now have Scully here, my mother, but she's going to be hard to convince that any of this is real. And I have two strangers, good people, who, if what I saw when we were coming through to this side is true, are not in the best emotional shape.

The only thing I feel like I can cling to right now is my light, the thing that's always been with me, but I can barely see it.

I let my eyes fall completely shut and hope that when I wake again, my light will come back. I don't know what any of us will do if it doesn't.


End file.
